The period of adjustment to life at the Hill Top School was a very bewildering one to Isabelle. The excitement over Peggy’s accident was soon past, to that heroine’s intense regret. She prolonged her nervous prostration as long as possible, and was duly petted and made much of by the girls. Isabelle, full of remorse for the trouble she had brought upon her room-mate, adopted her as her special charge.
The routine of the school, if you could call it that, began. Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin had strange ideas in regard to the training of the young. They kept the school small, so that they might not be hampered in their experiments, and strangely enough, they drew their pupils largely from the families of the rich. When he was asked about this once, Mr. Benjamin said:
“It seems to be our mission to teach these little richlings to
‘Ride a cock horse,To Banbury Cross,To see what moneycan’tbuy!’
‘Ride a cock horse,To Banbury Cross,To see what moneycan’tbuy!’
“They get life so crookedly from servants and such,” he added. “Phœbe and I just try to straighten them out.”
The process by which these two rare souls accomplished this straightening out was quite their own. There wasonly one extra teacher, a Frenchwoman who came from Boston twice a week. For the rest, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin conducted the school, and did all the teaching.
During October and November, and again in late April and May, lessons were all out of doors. The whole school studied Botany and Zoology with Mr. Benjamin. They wandered over the hills, on the brisk autumn days, with their boxes and cases and bottles for specimens. These lessons were a series of enchanted tales to Isabelle, of how the life force persists in bugs and plants. The whole morning on certain days of the week would be devoted to this peripatetic grazing, then note books would be written up before lunch.
This function was also a lesson. Certain girls took charge of it each day—planned, ordered, prepared and cooked the meal, in the open, over a gypsy fire. The girls in charge were limited in expenditure, and there was great rivalry among them to find something new and toothsome to make in the skillet or the big kettle. Careful accounts were kept by each set of managers, and if, at the end of the school term, there was credit balance, a special party was given on the savings.
A second committee took charge of serving the meal; a third, of the clearing away and dishwashing. Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin were always treated as guests on these occasions.
Arithmetic was accompanied by instruction in banking. Allowances were deposited in a central bank, with elected officers. All money was drawn by check. Books were balanced weekly, and penalty imposed upon careless financiers.
Mrs. Benjamin conducted the classes in English Literature, and because she loved books truly, she led these girls step by step into the realm of the best. Shakespeare was studied and loved, and played under the trees. Wordsworth and Tennyson and Longfellow read in the open, are very different from Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Longfellow parsed indoors. Poetry was not a “study” to be pored over in the schoolroom; it was a natural beautiful expression of life, sung instead of spoken. So they came to our modern poets with interest and understanding, because these new poets, forsooth, spoke the language of these children of the present.
Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Victor Hugo, read aloud and discussed; these were a treat—no task—here. These great artists were considered not only as makers of romance, creators of literature, but also as historians of their times. Their books were studied along with the history of the countries and the peoples that they described. Then came the geography of the places wherein the stories were laid, then a study of the social conditions and customs of the periods to which they gave expression.
American history was taught by both the Benjamins. It was their hobby. Not the sort of history taught in most schools, “fixed up” for the young, but the true history of our country—its blunders, its stupidities, its triumphs.
So through the whole curriculum, acquiring knowledge was a pleasant thing. It was not a matter of being fed with little unrelated chunks of information, on this or on that. It was rather being led into a great field, wherenow this part, now that, held your interest, but you never lost sight of the whole expanse.
As for play, there were nutting expeditions, hay rides, marshmallow roasts, any number of out-of-door joys. It was as nearly a normal life as can be reached in these days of ours.
To Isabelle it was unbelievable. Everything they did during the day interested her. Her old passion for leadership spurred her on, but now it was a spur to excel in legitimate things. Her sense of rebellion was laid away, because she liked nearly everything she had to do, and her days were so busy that there was no excess vitality to work itself off in pranks.
Not that she was a reformed soul—far from it! There were times when she balked the duties she liked least, and was gently called upon by Mrs. Benjamin to punish herself. After the first amusement of this novelty wore off, it became plain to her that the punishment she administered to herself was always more severe than any one else would have prescribed. Sometimes punishment was decided upon by the community as a whole. By degrees the girls all began to realize “the social spirit” for the first time in their self-centred, individualistic lives.
“Mrs. Benjamin,” Isabelle said one day, bursting into the presence of that lady, “I feel full of the devil to-day!”
“Dost thou, Isabelle? Dear me! we must think of something to dispossess him.”
“Better give me somethinghardto do.”
“It is now half past eight. Suppose thee goes down to the big field to help Henry pitch hay until ten.”
“All right,” agreed Isabelle.
“Thee might speak to Mr. Benjamin on thy way out, about the seven devils that possess thee,” smiled her teacher.
Another influence that was working in the development of the girl was the dependent devotion of Peggy Starr. Her young room-mate worshipped Isabelle. She began by following her through fire, and she would not have stopped at water. What Isabelle did and said and thought was Peggy’s law.
Now Mrs. Benjamin took hold of the situation at once. She disapproved of the school girl “crush.” She had a long talk with Isabelle and urged her to look after the younger girl, to help her forget her “claim” to invalidism, to influence her to normal activity. Isabelle accepted the responsibility and felt it deeply. She restrained herself from this and that because of Peggy. If she did things, Peggy would do them. So again, wise Mrs. Benjamin let her teach herself her first lessons in self-control.
“Isabelle,” Mr. Benjamin said to her, when she had been at the school about two months, “I have a letter from thy father. He says thee does not write home.”
“I’ve been busy,” Isabelle said, frowning.
“But what does thee do on Sunday afternoons, when the other girls write home?”
“I’d rather not tell.”
“But thee writes; I’ve seen thee.”
She nodded.
“I want thee to write thy mother to-day, Isabelle,” he said, sternly.
He told his wife of this conversation later.
“She writes volumes on Sunday,” he said, “now what does she do with it?”
“She is one of the strangest children we’ve ever had, Adam,” she answered.
“She is rather exhausting to me,” he said.
“She’s lived under abnormal conditions of some sort. I cannot seem to visualize her parents at all. She never speaks of them. She was so bitter and sullen when she came to us,” Mrs. Benjamin mused. “I must try to get her confidence about her parents, she may be needing help.”
“She came to thee just in time, my Phœbe.”
“Yes, that’s true. A little more and she would have been a bitter cynic at eighteen. Even now when she just begins to respond, like a frost-bitten plant, I am not sure of the blossom.”
“Hot-house growth, thee must remember.”
“She interests me deeply, and I’m growing very fond of her.”
“Lucky Isabelle,” her husband smiled.
Later in the day when the other girls were out at play Mrs. Benjamin came upon Isabelle, pen in hand, gazing into the distance.
“What is troubling my child?”
“Mr. Benjamin told me to write to Max.”
“Who is Max?”
“My mother.”
“Thy mother, and thee calls her Max?”
“I always have.”
“But it is not respectful, is it?”
“No, but I don’t respect her much.”
“Doesn’t thee?”—calmly.
“No, you can’t”—earnestly.
“And what does thee call thy father?”
“Wally.”
Mrs. Benjamin smiled. Here was all the clue she needed to the kind of parents Isabelle possessed.
“It may have been considered precocious, when thee was little, to call them so. But if I were in thy place, I would not do it now. It gives the wrong impression of thy manners. I think thee has very pretty manners,” she added.
Isabelle flushed with pleasure.
“You see, Max—my mother—doesn’t really care where I am, or what I do, so long as I’m not in her way, so I don’t know what to write her.”
“Couldn’t thee write thy father, then?”
“Well, it would be easier,” she admitted. “Wally is a good sort, and understands more.”
“Write to him then. That will do, I’m sure.”
“All right. But nobody writesmeletters. I never get any.”
“To whom does thee write in the letter hour, my dear?”
Isabelle was on her guard at once.
“Oh, to somebody I like.”
“Some friend of thine?”
“Um—yes.”
“Couldn’t thee tell me about this friend? Mr. Benjamin and I are especially interested in the friends of our girls. I have never seen thee post thy letters.”
“I don’t post them”—shamefacedly.
“Oh, they are to an imaginary friend,” said Mrs. Benjamin, seizing an idea.
Isabelle nodded.
“That’s delightful. I used to have an imaginary companion, too. Is thine a girl?”
“No.”
Mrs. Benjamin ignored Isabelle’s uncommunicativeness.
“Why wouldn’t that be a good idea for the theme class, Isabelle? ‘Letters to an imaginary chum’?”
“Mine isn’t a chum.”
“Would thee care to tell me?”
Isabelle rose.
“I’ll show them to you,” she said; and she ran upstairs, and brought a collection of letters to lay in Mrs. Benjamin’s lap.
“Thank thee, dear. May I read them?”
The girl nodded. Mrs. Benjamin lifted the first one. It was addressed to: “My Regular Parents.” Isabelle went and threw herself down by the fire, her face turned away, while Mrs. Benjamin read:
Oh my dear Parents:I wish you could see this beautiful school I’ve come to. It has hills, and a large house, and Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin. Mr. Benjamin has a wrinkly smile, and Mrs. Benjamin is so understanding. They are Quakers and say “thee” and “thou” for “you.” It is sweet. When I come home let us say “thee” and “thou” to each other, will you? It sounds so very special.We study out of doors, and it is fun. We play lots of things, like basketball in the field, so we are healthy. My room-mate is Peggy Starr, a very young girl, often tiresome.This is Sunday, and all the girls write home, so I write you, dear, dear, regular parents. I think of you a great deal. Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin are just like you, that is why I love them so dearly. I am glad we are poor and have only each other, aren’t you? I know some people named Max and Wally, who are rich. They have so much golf, and parties that they can’t ever bother with their child, except to scold her. But you care about me, don’t you? And you like to hear what I do at school. I would be lonesome without you.I will try hard to do good, because I love you so much.Your loving daughter,Isabelle.
Oh my dear Parents:
I wish you could see this beautiful school I’ve come to. It has hills, and a large house, and Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin. Mr. Benjamin has a wrinkly smile, and Mrs. Benjamin is so understanding. They are Quakers and say “thee” and “thou” for “you.” It is sweet. When I come home let us say “thee” and “thou” to each other, will you? It sounds so very special.
We study out of doors, and it is fun. We play lots of things, like basketball in the field, so we are healthy. My room-mate is Peggy Starr, a very young girl, often tiresome.
This is Sunday, and all the girls write home, so I write you, dear, dear, regular parents. I think of you a great deal. Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin are just like you, that is why I love them so dearly. I am glad we are poor and have only each other, aren’t you? I know some people named Max and Wally, who are rich. They have so much golf, and parties that they can’t ever bother with their child, except to scold her. But you care about me, don’t you? And you like to hear what I do at school. I would be lonesome without you.
I will try hard to do good, because I love you so much.
Your loving daughter,
Isabelle.
Mrs. Benjamin finished them, then looked at the girl, whose face was turned away, and her smile was very tender. She spoke simply, without a touch of sentimentality.
“Dear, they are very sweet and loving letters. I am glad thee thinks Mr. Benjamin and I are like thy ‘regular parents.’”
Isabelle looked at her shyly.
“Suppose we make an agreement, Isabelle. Thee is to write a short letter to thy father every Sunday, and the rest of the letter hour can be devoted to thy ‘regular parents.’ This letter thee will post to me, and—since I have no ‘regular daughter’—every Sunday afternoon I will post a letter to thee. Is that a bargain?”
“Oh, yes!” cried the girl, flaming to meet this suggestion—this understanding. “Oh, dear Mrs. Benjamin,” she added, “you are so love-ful!”
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The new relationship established between Mrs. Benjamin and Isabelle was so precious to the little girl that she abandoned her banner of revolt once for all, and gave herself up to the congenial atmosphere of Hill Top. It was the only home she had ever known, since home is a matter of love and people rather than bricks and stones.
The secret correspondence was a complete outlet for Isabelle’s imagination, and she pored over the letters her “regular mother” wrote her with utter devotion. She put them away to keep for all her life. They were indeed wonderful letters, full of the fine idealism, the working philosophy that inspired the Benjamins. When there was some misdemeanour, or some fractured rule to be called to Isabelle’s attention, it was delicately introduced into the weekly letter, instead of being talked out in the library.
Excess vitality got the girl into scrapes sometimes, but as the Benjamins came to understand her better and to love her, they found ways of appealing to her common sense, or her instinct for justice, to which she never failed to respond. Her quick mind had already put her at the head of her classes.
The out-of-door life and her enjoyment of everythingbegan to show in her whole bearing. Her face lost its sharp curves, she took on some flesh, her colour was high and her eyes were bright. At last she was coming into her birthright of happy, normal girlhood.
The letters home continued to be written to Wally, and once in a long while she had a brief note from him.
“What kind of a father have you got?” she inquired of Peggy, one day, after the perusal of one of these epistles.
“He is very nice, I think. He was sorry I wasn’t a boy, but he always gives me five dollars whenever he sees me. What kind is yours?”
“Wally is the nicest person in our family,” she said guardedly.
“Is your father handsome?”
Isabelle hesitated a second.
“Yes—very.”
“Mine isn’t. He’s fat—awf’ly fat. His head blouses over his collar all round.”
“You mean his neck.”
“No, he hasn’t any neck—it’s the back of his head. Don’t you wish your father looked like a Gibson man?”
“Mine does.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Very tall and broad-shouldered, with wavy hair, grey eyes, andwonderfulteeth! He’s very smart looking—oh, very!”
“Oh, Isabelle, he must be grand!” ejaculated Peggy.
“You ought to see him on a horse. He’s just superb,” she answered, delighted with her fairy story.
“Who is?” asked one of the crowd of six girls who joined them at this moment.
“Isabelle’s father. Tell them about him, Isabelle,” urged Peggy, the adoring.
So Isabelle began to enlarge upon the theme of the magnificent being who was her father. When she had finished his portrait Wally was a cross between a Norse Viking and a Greek god, with a few lines by Charles Dana Gibson just to bring him into the realm of reality. The girls were thrilled to hear of this heroic being. They entreated Isabelle to have him visit her, but she assured them that it was out of the question. This superman, this leader of society and Wall Street, could never find time to visit so obscure a spot.
Isabelle’s father became a legendary figure among them, beautiful and godlike. She shone in the reflected glory of him for weeks. His experiences and adventures were added toad infinitum.
“And my father was riding on his black horse, Nero, when he saw thisverybeautiful girl, in distress. He asked her what was the matter; she told him that she was falsely accused—that the police were after her.”
“Oh, what was she accused of, Isabelle?”—breathlessly.
“Murder,” said Isabelle, promptly.
“Mercy! whatdidyour father do?”
“He hesitated not a minute. With one sweep of his arm he lifted her to the saddle before him, and started Nero on a gallop.”
“Did the girl scream?”
“Oh, no. She relaxed in his arms. She knew she could trust myfather. He rushed her to his shooting lodge in the forest and hid her there for several weeks.”
“But, Isabelle, didn’t he fall in love with her?”
“Certainly.”
“But he wasmarried.”
“Well, a little thing like that wouldn’t matter to a man like my father. He loved her but he told her he could not marry her because of Max and me.”
“And did he leave her?”—disconsolately.
“Yes, he left her.”
“Did the police find her?”
“Never. She went off to Europe and nobody ever knew a thing about it.”
“How did you know about it?”—suspiciously.
“Oh, I am my father’s confidante,” boasted Isabelle. “We tell each other everything.”
“Does he still love her?”
“Oh, yes; he will bear the marks to his grave.”
A sigh of sentimental satisfaction went around.
“I wish my father was interesting like that,” sighed Peggy.
It was in the spring when romance was in the very air, that a motor honked up the hill, and Wally inquired for Isabelle. Mrs. Benjamin received him.
“I’m anxious about Isabelle,” he said, early in their talk.
“Anxious?”
“Yes. You’ve never made any complaints about her, or threatened to send her home or anything.”
“We have no complaints to make,” Mrs. Benjamin smiled. “She is a very clever and delightful child.”
“Delightful? Isabelle?”
“We find her so. Affectionate, easily managed, full of life, and a natural leader.”
“How Isabelle must have changed!” said Wally, soulfully.
When at a summons from Mrs. Benjamin the girl came into the room, he saw that she had changed. She electrified the room with her health and vitality.
“Wally!” she exclaimed, and suddenly went white to the lips.
“Hello, Isabelle; thought I’d have a look at you, in passing.”
He kissed her cold cheek awkwardly.
“Don’t seem very pleased to see me,” he added.
“Oh, but I am, Wally; I am,” she said, with an anxious eye on the door.
“Thou may’st have a holiday, Isabelle, to visit with thy father. We’d be glad to have thee spend the night, Mr. Bryce.”
“Just here for a few hours, thanks. Thought I’d look in on the kid. Very kind of you, I’m sure.”
Mrs. Benjamin left them.
“Wally, do me a favour,” said Isabelle, breathlessly.
“So soon?” he laughed.
“Take me off in the motor for the day.”
“But I want to see the school, and meet your pals, and get acquainted with the Benjamins.”
“Oh, Wally, it’s just like any school, and I’m shut up here all the time. I’m just dying for a day in the country,” she urged. “P-l-e-a-s-eWally.”
“All right, come on. You aren’t taking me off for fear they’ll give you away, are you?”
“Give me away?”—anxiously.
“Mrs. Benjamin says you’re a prize pupil, but they can’t get away with that, Isabelle; I know you.”
“No, you don’t,” she laughed. “I’m all new.”
She slipped her arm through his and urged him forth.
“Come on, Wally, be a dear.”
So she managed to get him in the car and away from the house before the school trooped in. She had no plan beyond that, but she knew that she must never let Wally go back to that school. She looked at his little wizened face, muffled up in his coat collar, and his little pinched hands on the wheel. No; only over her dead body should the girls see Wally!
She set herself to his entertainment, and got him into a good humour in no time. He roared at her stories, her comments on the girls. He noted her fine colour.
“You’re getting handsome, Isabelle.”
“Beauty is but skin deep. I rely on my line of talk,” she replied, and joined in his laughter.
“Look here, why did you railroad me out of that school so fast?”
“I thought it would be nicer to have you all to myself,” she replied, innocently.
“Isabelle, Isabelle, what are you up to?” her father demanded.
“Nothing, Wally—honest. I’m a reformed character.”
She induced him to take her to lunch at The Gay Dog Inn, and they were very merry over the meal.
“I quite like you, Isabelle,” said Wally. “You used to embarrass me to death.”
“I’ve always rather liked you, Wally,” she retorted, to their mutual amusement.
“See here, I must be getting on, if I’m to make Boston for dinner,” he said, consulting his watch.
“You needn’t take me clear up to the school. You may drop me at what we call the cross roads.”
“Oh, I’ll get you back,” he protested.
From the moment they were headed for the school she talked feverishly, and thought wildly. How could she keep him from going to Hill Top? They had some trouble with the engine and while Wally tinkered with it, she sat with her eyes screwed shut, praying that something would happen to save her face.
“No extra tires and a balky engine. I’ll bounce that mechanic when I get back,” he grumbled, as they started off again.
The short spring day was beginning to fade, when Isabelle laid her hand on his arm.
“This is the cross roads. I get out here,” she said.
“I’ll run you up,” he answered, casually.
“But I’d rather walk, Wally. I need the exercise.”
As she was beginning to get out, he had to stop.
“What’s the plot?”
“No plot. You’ll be terribly late now. It wassweetof you to come, Wally, and I’m obliged for the party,” she said, kissing him, and dismounting.
“Isabelle, have you murdered anybody?” he asked, gravely.
“Not yet,” she replied, equally gravely. Then with a wave and a shouted good-bye she ran up the hill, and disappeared into the underbrush.
“Well, I’m damned!” grinned her father; and he turned back on his way to Boston.
Isabelle ran through the woods singing, whistling, praying. “Good Lord, I thank thee,” she said, repeatedly. “You can rely on me not to lie again.” Flushed and relieved from doom, happy as a cricket, she appeared at the school. She was greeted with howls of rage from the girls.
“Isabelle, you pig! To carry him off without letting us see him.”
“How did he look? Is he handsomer than ever?” they chorused.
But Isabelle escaped their catechism. She had been saved once, and she dared not tamper with fate again. At every thought of Wally, speeding back to Boston, she drew a deep sigh of relief.
As they were all seated at supper Mr. Benjamin asked:
“Didst thou have a pleasant day with thy father, little girl?”
Ten pairs of envious eyes were upon her.
“Perfect,” she sighed.
“Sorry we could not keep him overnight.”
The maid entered to speak to Mrs. Benjamin, whereupon she rose and left the table. Isabelle was enlarging upon the delights of her holiday when her tongue suddenly clave to the roof of her mouth. She heard a voice saying:
“Engine wouldn’t work—tire punctured.”
She prayed violently for a fatal stroke of lightning or paralysis, but in vain. Mrs. Benjamin entered, followed by an irritated dapper little man.
“Adam, my dear, we have a guest. This is Isabelle’s father.”
A gasp went round the table—audible, visible. Never in his life had Wally Bryce made such a sensation. He stared at these girls who turned such strange looks upon him. As for Isabelle, at the moment she would not have hesitated at patricide, but that being out of the question, she burst into peal after peal of hysterical laughter.
Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin were perfectly aghast at the behaviour of the school, and Wally remarked irritably,—
“Shut up, Isabelle; shut up!”
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That supper proved to be a most difficult meal! Usually when there were guests, the girls talked and behaved very prettily, but on this occasion they sat like silent, accusing ghosts, eating in unbroken stillness. Mrs. Benjamin tried to lead them into conversation, but in vain. There were cross currents of feeling which she could not understand or cope with. Isabelle babbled on, with intermittent fits of hysterical laughter. Whenever she spoke, black looks were concentrated upon her; when Wally spoke, they were transferred to him. Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin did their best, but they were relieved when the ordeal was over and the girls went off to the study room.
Isabelle was excused, because of her guest. She was glad of every moment that postponed her hour of reckoning. Wally could be disposed of, but the girls must be met. The Benjamins had duties to attend to, so Wally and his daughter were left alone for a quarter of an hour, in the library.
“Look here!” he burst out at her. “What’s the matter with those kids?”
“Matter?”—innocently.
“They glared at me as if I had murdered their mothers! Do they always eat in dead silence like that?”
Isabelle cast a glance over her shoulders to see that they were quite alone.
“This is what I tried to save you from,” she whispered.
“You mean that’s why you bundled me off this morning, and barred me out this evening?”
She nodded solemnly.
“The machine balked, the tire blew out, I had to come back,” he apologized. “What’s the matter with ’em anyhow?”
“You see we have a society for the Discouragement of Visiting Parents.”
“What’s the point?”
“You see, we endure a great deal from our parents, at home, but here we are free. The minute they begin visiting us, the trouble begins. So when they come, we are pledged to act like this, and they never come again.”
“Nice hospitable lot of kids! And do the Benjamins stand for this?”
“They don’t know about it; it’s a secret.”
“They can see, can’t they? A blind man could have seen their outrageous manners,” he remarked, hotly.
“Parents have outrageous manners, too, you know, and we have to put up with them”—calmly.
“Well, I’m——”
“Don’t swear, Wally; Quakers don’t like it.”
“I never heard such nerve in my life! Lot of kids setting themselves up——”
“Try to put yourself in our place, Wally. When you were at school, did you long to have your mother visit you?”
“That was different——”
“No, that was the same,” she said, finally. “I tried to save you, but you would come back. I’ve enjoyed your visit very much, but it’s against our rules to act kindly to visiting parents, and if I do I’ll be expelled.”
“I suppose you’d like me to leave to-night?”—sarcastically.
“No, but get off as soon as you can in the morning, and let me manage things to-night.”
The Benjamins joined them at this point, so conversation became general. Isabelle withdrew into her own mind, to think ahead how to avert the next crisis. When the girls came down for the hour of relaxation, there would be more embarrassment, unless she could manage. She strolled to the window and looked out.
There was a brilliant full moon, showering its largesse over the hills. They looked so calm, so remote—why did humans introduce such problems into the scheme of things? questioned Isabelle precociously. But the view gave her an idea.
“Mrs. Benjamin,” she cried, “might we have a moonlight tramp and show my father some of our walks?”
“Would thy father like that? We often go for a walk in the moonlight, Mr. Bryce. The girls like it before they go to bed. Would thee enjoy it?”
Isabelle fixed him with a stern eye, and nodded.
“Why, yes, I think that would be nice,” said Wally, who hated walking.
When the girls came down they silently accepted the plan. They put on their sweaters and boots, as the springwas young and the ground soft. Mrs. Benjamin marvelled at their restraint, but laid it to their commendable desire to appear well before their guest. Two by two they marched dumbly behind the Benjamins and the Bryces. Up hill and down they went. Isabelle felt their eyes like javelins in her back, even while she kept up a lively stream of conversation.
“Girls, thee need not walk in line,” protested Mrs. Benjamin. “Show thy father the sowing game, Isabelle. Lead the girls out. This is a game thy daughter invented, Mr. Bryce, and which we love to play.”
Isabelle, thus adjured, stepped forth, swept the enemy with a glance and took command. It was really a sort of a dance, whirling and circling and sowing seed in pantomime. Usually it was a wild, laughing happy affair—with antics and pranks extemporaneously introduced—but to-night it was as forced and funereal as a chorus of grave diggers. Mr. Bryce murmured appreciation, Mrs. Benjamin looked her question to her husband, who shook his head.
After what seemed to Wally ages of torment and a hundred miles or so of action, they went back to the school and to bed. Reminded by Isabelle, he arranged for an early start, and then Wally’s part in the episode was closed.
But Isabelle’s troubles had just begun. Peggy was in bed when she entered their room, and Isabelle was sure she was awake although her face was toward the wall, and no answer to questions passed her lips. Isabelle hurried to put out the light, but when she was in bed, whispersseemed to surround her, fingers to point at her, out of the dark. She turned the situation over and over in her mind. She had spared Wally the truth, but she herself must face it. Unless she could think of a way to explain her fairy stories to the girls, her position as leader in that school was lost. She invented this explanation and that, only to discard them. It seemed as if only her death could solve the problem, and she felt that to be extreme, in the circumstances.
She turned and tossed and agonized for hours, to fall, finally, into a troubled sleep, beset by dreams of herself, as a sort of pariah, wandering through her school days, on the edge of things.
The next day brought no soothing surprise. Cold nods of good-morning greeted her, groups of whispering critics edged away from her contaminating presence. Even Peggy, the faithful, had gone over to the enemy. The nervous strain of the day told on her, and when she made a bad mistake in a recitation the class tittered.
“Why, girls,” said Mr. Benjamin in surprise, “it is not courteous to laugh at a mistake.”
Evening brought Isabelle to a state of complete despair. The heavens had not opened to save her this time. She was to expiate in full. . . . Then she rose to new heights. She determined to make full confession and demand a public sentence. She would make herself suffer to the full extent.
True to instinct, even in despair, she waited until the girls had gathered for recreation hour before bedtime. Then she rose up, and as it were, laid her head upon the block.
“Mrs. Benjamin, I have to be punished,” she said.
“Hast thou, Isabelle?”
“I want the girls to pronounce my sentence.”
Mr. Benjamin smiled at his wife.
“I hope thy friends will temper justice with mercy, Isabelle,” he remarked with the wrinkly smile threatening. “What is thy crime?”
“It’s about my father,” began the culprit.
“Yes, what about thy father?”
The girls eyed her hostilely, where she stood, by the fireplace, dominating the scene.
“I’ve always loved beautiful people so . . .” she began intensely.
“That is no sin,” encouraged Mrs. Benjamin.
“I admire big, handsome men . . .”
One of the girls sniffed. This sound let loose the flow of Isabelle’s histrionic remorse.
“Oh, you must listen to me,” she cried, “you cannot condemn me until I have told it all.”
“That is fair,” said the calm voice of Mrs. Benjamin.
“It was always a disappointment to me that my father was so little and queer.”
“But, Isabelle,” interrupted Mrs. Benjamin, quickly.
“Please, I have to say what I think or it isn’t a true story. Wally is much the nicest person in our family, but somehow he never seemed to count with anybody.”
This daring focussed their attention. Mrs. Benjamin shook her head at her husband, who was about to interrupt this performance.
“I wanted a big kind of father, who blustered at you and made you feel respectful. I wanted him to have adventures, like Don Quixote, and make you thrilly all up and down your spine!”
“Didst thou want him to wear a sword and scabbard?” interrupted Mr. Benjamin, who disapproved of these heroics. But Isabelle was warmed to her subject now, and she did not hear him.
“Imagine what it meant to me to want that kind of a father, and to get Wally! You all know how I felt. It was just what you felt last night when you saw him first,” she accused them. “When I was a lonely little girl I used to make up stories about the kind of parent I wanted. The made-up one got all mixed up with the real one. So when Peggy asked me if my father was handsome, I didn’t stop to think which one she meant, I just said yes because the make-believe one was awf’ly good looking.”
“But you only have one father, Isabelle,” Peggy defended herself.
“I know I really have only one, but don’t you see, I didn’tmeanto tell a lie, even if it did turn out to be one.”
“What did thee tell, Isabelle?” inquired Mrs. Benjamin.
“I told Peggy that my father was handsome, meaning my make-believe one. The girls asked me about him, and I told them a lot of stories about him. They were always asking me to tell more.”
“They were all about rescuing beautiful girls, and catching burglars, and saving children. You ought to have heard what she told us about him!” exclaimed Agnes Pollock.
“Why, Isabelle!”
“But they were true! They did happen to the other one!”
“There isn’t any other one!” retorted Peggy.
“Yes, there is. I believe in him, and so do you, every one of you!” countered Isabelle. “He was just as real as Mr. Benjamin. You said so yourselves.”
“But he’s only made up.”
“Oh, can’t you see that the things you make up are lots realer than the things that are?” cried Isabelle with such conviction that they were all silenced.
“The matter comes to this, doesn’t it? Isabelle, not intending to lie, misled all of ye about her father,” said Mr. Benjamin, gravely.
“Yes, and we adored him so! When that little wizened man came in, we almost died!” blurted out Peggy.
The light broke upon the Benjamins, but they tried not to smile at each other.
“Isabelle’s imagination can prove a gift or a curse,” Mr. Benjamin continued. “Its possession lays a great obligation upon her. If it is used to mislead, or to obscure the truth, it is a dangerous power. Whatever the extenuating circumstances, it comes to this, that Isabelle lied to her friends. Phœbe, what does thee think about this situation?”
“I think thee is right in saying that this is a very serious matter. I agree with Isabelle, that she should be punished, if only to remind her that such misuse of a talent is a very ugly thing.”
“I have been punished by the way the girls have treated me! I am punished when Mr. Benjamin says I have told a lie! But I want you to do something to hurt me! I wish Mr. Benjamin would beat me, or put me on bread and water. I hate myself. I’m just a common, mean liar! Whatever you decide to do to me is all right, and I deserve it!”
As she denounced herself, she fairly glowed with indignation; she was radiant with humility. The girls were hypnotized by her!
“I think Isabelle should miss the recreation hour for a month,” said Mr. Benjamin.
The girls gasped, for this was the extreme penalty, but Isabelle never flinched.
“I will, Mr. Benjamin. I’ll go to bed alone, in the dark, for a month and pray the Lord not to let me be a liar.”
“I think thee must not rely too much upon divine power, Isabelle. Set a watch upon thy tongue thyself,” he said—very severely for the gentle Adam. “Thee may go to bed now.”
Condemned, abased, like a prisoner en route to the gallows, Isabelle walked from among them. She was disgraced, but, Isabelle-like, she wore her shame like a rose in her hair!
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Isabelle was not forced to abrogate her reign, after all. Somehow her cleverness and her oddity always kept the spotlight focussed upon her. Needless to state Wally did not repeat his visit, and the spring term came to its end.
With its expiration came a letter from Mrs. Bryce asking whether the Benjamins would keep Isabelle at Hill Top until the end of August, as the Bryces were going to Europe and did not wish to take her with them. It never occurred to Mrs. Bryce to consult the girl’s pleasure in the matter, but Mrs. Benjamin carried the letter to her at once.
“Would thee like to stay, Isabelle?”
“Like it? I’d adore it!” cried that young person, with the explosive over-emphasis of youth.
Mrs. Benjamin smiled and patted her hand.
“We would like it, too. I will write thy mother.”
So it was arranged, and Isabelle stayed on. Two other girls were to remain also. By special petition to Wally Isabelle was permitted to have the Peruvian horse to spend the summer with her.
It was a never-to-be-forgotten holiday for those three girls. They took part in all the activities of the farm. They picked fruit and helped Mrs. Benjamin and the cookto can the big supplies of jam and jelly for the school. They helped in the garden with the vegetables or worked and weeded Mrs. Benjamin’s beloved flowers. They pitched hay, they drove the rake and the grass cutter. They were busy in the open from morning until night and as happy as field larks.
Lessons had stopped, but education went on. They read aloud with Mrs. Benjamin; they studied and learned, first hand, of Nature’s prodigality or niggardliness. Always there was the cultivation of the spirit. Love and fair dealing made the foundation upon which these simple Quaker folk had builded their lives, and no one could live in the home of their making without feeling that these were as essential to life as breathing.
Isabelle had long, wild gallops over the hills on her horse, during which she pondered “the long, long thoughts of youth” and brought the resulting problems to Mrs. Benjamin in the weekly letters, or in some of their intimate talks.
“It is hard to believe that this is the freakish sullen child who came to us less than a year ago,” Mrs. Benjamin commented as the girls went off to bed one night.
“No, it is wonderful. Thou hast made a new being of her.”
“Thou hast done it as much as I have. It is evidently her first experience of being understood and loved.”
“What strange excrescences do grow up on our so-called civilization,” he said.
“Is thee calling the rich an excrescence?” she smiled.
“I know that they are just human beings like ourselves, but how do they get things so awry? They put such a slight upon parenthood, with their servant-made children.”
She nodded, and he went on developing his thought.
“It is ominous when the basic relationships are so abused—marriage held so lightly, children disdaining their own parents, as our Isabelle does. Where is it leading us, Phœbe?”
“Dear knows—dear knows!” she sighed, shaking her head.
It was a well-worn theme with them. They had to ponder deeply these tendencies, for it was their work to try to counteract these destructive forces—to build up in the hearts of these servant-made children, as Mr. Benjamin called them, a respect for God and man and the holy things that grow out of their relationship.
The summer passed almost without event. The three girls, hard and brown as Indians, were beginning to plan for the fall, when the others would return.
It was in early September that the blow fell upon Isabelle. A telegram from Wally had appraised his daughter of their arrival in New York. They were to spend the fall at the Club house near The Beeches. He hoped she was well. Did she want him to come and see her?
She answered this briefly, also a note from her mother. As Mrs. Bryce rarely troubled to write letters to any one, Isabelle pondered the reason for this amiable epistle. It was soon to be explained. Mrs. Benjamin received a letter from Mrs. Bryce saying that notification had arrivedthat Isabelle would be admitted this October to Miss Vantine’s Finishing School, where her name had been entered for years. She wished the girl sent directly to this address in New York on the last day of September, as she was to board at the school for the present until it was decided whether the Bryces would open their town house.
Mr. Benjamin shook his head sadly over this letter, and carried it to his wife.
“Adam—Adam, we cannot let her go tothatschool! It will be her ruination,” she exclaimed.
“My dear, it is the most fashionable school in New York,” he replied, with a sigh.
“It is shoddy, and artificial and false!” she protested in unwonted heat. “My poor, dear Isabelle! Adam, couldn’t we make a plea for her?—tell her mother how she improves here, how fast she progresses?”
“Phœbe dear, dost thou think that that would interest this lady?”
“But we can’t let her go without one effort to save her. I think it is as serious as that, at this stage of the girl’s development.”
“Suppose thee writes a letter to Mrs. Bryce.”
“I will. Let us not speak of it to Isabelle until I have her mother’s answer.”
“Very well, dear heart.”
Mrs. Benjamin wrote and re-wrote the letter. Finally one was despatched and she anxiously awaited the reply. It was long in coming, and it fell like a blow on her heart. Mrs. Bryce was glad to have such a good report of Isabelle,but her plan had always been that the girl should spend, at Miss Vantine’s school, the two years previous to her début, as she herself had done. All the girls of her daughter’s set went there, and she wished Isabelle to be with them. Thanking Mrs. Benjamin for her interest, etc., etc.
The Benjamins had a conference of disappointment over it, and it was decided that Isabelle must be told. Mrs. Benjamin’s face was so rueful over it that her husband offered to do the telling. He and Isabelle were going off on an expedition together, which would give him an opportunity, and Mrs. Benjamin could provide the comfort that must follow.
He found it no easy task. As he looked at his sturdy young companion, listened to her picturesque talk, he felt that he was called upon to tell a young vestal virgin that she was to be sacrificed to the god of mammon.
“This is good air, isn’t it!” she said, breathing deeply. “How do people live in cities, do you suppose?”
Mr. Benjamin longed to shirk, but he took himself in hand.
“I have had a letter from thy mother, Isabelle.”
She glanced at him suspiciously.
“What does she want?”
“She wants thee to go to a school in New York this winter.”
She stopped and faced him in alarm.
“To leave Hill Top?”
“I’m afraid so, little sister.”
“But I won’t! I won’t go away from here. I love it here, I love you and Mrs. Benjamin. Oh, why does Max always interfere with me? I hate her!” she cried, passionately.
Mr. Benjamin laid a steadying hand on her shoulder, and walked beside her.
“I understand what a blow this is to thee, and how unhappy it makes thee. But one of the things that we want our girls to learn is to honour and respect their parents,” he said gently.
“But how can I respect Max, Mr. Benjamin? She never respects me.”
He saw the justice of her remark and strove not to play the moralist.
“Thee can put a curb on thy lips, my dear. I wish that thee might show Mrs. Benjamin and me that thy life here with us has meant something to thee, by obeying thy mother as cheerfully and willingly as thee can.”
He felt the young body under his hand shudder with the effort for control. She lifted stricken eyes to him, as he said afterward, and nodded without a word. He helped her as well as he could, by talking of other things, but he felt her suffering as keenly as if it had been his own.
When they came back to the house, she went to her room, and he carried the report to his wife.
“Sorrow goes so deep with them, at this age,” he said, tenderly.
“Poor, passionate child; she will always be torn by life,” sighed Mrs. Benjamin. “I will not go to her yet. I’ll let her try solitude first.”
She did not appear at lunch, so Mrs. Benjamin carried a tray to her. The girl was not crying, she was sitting bythe window, looking out over the hills, in a sort of dumb agony.
“I want thee to eat some lunch, my Isabelle.”
A white face turned toward her. The very sun-brown seemed to have been seared off by suffering.
“I can’t eat, dear Mrs. Benjamin,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking that we might make a plan, dear,” the older woman said, setting the tray aside and dismissing it. She drew a chair beside the girl and took her cold hands. “Thou wilt go to this school, as thy mother wishes, but when thou hast finished—it is only two years—if thee thinks the kind of life thy mother plans for thee too uncongenial, thee must come back to us, and help us with the school. There will always be a place for thee here, my child.”
“But two years in that loathsome school!”
“Thee dost not know that it’s loathsome. I’ve no doubt that if thee will take the right spirit with thee, it may be very good for thee. There are opportunities in that great city which Hill Top cannot offer.”
“But there won’t be any Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin! Oh, Mrs. Benjamin, why couldn’t you have been my mother?”
“I should have been proud to be, Isabelle,” she answered simply. “Thou art as dear to me as a daughter.”
Isabelle bent and kissed the kind hands that held her own, but she shed no tears.
“We all have bitter, disappointing things to meet. I shall expect my daughter to meet them with a fine courage,” she smiled.
“I’ll try,” said Isabelle; “but I’d rather die than leave here.”
“Thee has met life very squarely, so far as I have known thee. This is a test of thy quality, and I know thee will meet it like my true daughter.”
The girl’s eyes brimmed at that, but she looked off over the hills and merely nodded. Presently she rose and leaned her cheek for a second against Mrs. Benjamin’s hair.
“It’s all right, mother Benjamin,” she said, with the old ring in her voice.
The subject was not mentioned again. Save for a somewhat closer affection, a tenderer devotion on Isabelle’s part, no one would have known that they were facing a separation, which was an agony of dread to the girl. As Mr. Benjamin had said, of his wisdom: “Sorrow strikes so deep at that age.”
She took her part in the duties and pleasures of the days. But the Benjamins’ loving eyes marked a change. She brought no yeoman’s appetite to the table, she had to be urged to eat. The morning often brought her downstairs with dark circles about her eyes.
“Did thee sleep, dear child?”
“Oh, yes, thanks,” was the invariable answer.
“She’s getting all eyes again,” grumbled Mr. Benjamin.
Not until the very last day were the two other girls told of her coming departure. The last days were packed to the brim with duties, so that she might have no leisure to be sad. She put up a plucky fight; not a tear had she shed. But on the last day, when the clear bugle callroused her, she sprang from her bed, and ran to the window. Nature was at her painting again; splashes of red and yellow and russet brown streaked the hills. A sort of delicate mist enfolded them. Was it only a year ago that she had looked at these blessed hills for the first time? Again father Benjamin’s salute to the day rang out. She leaned her head against the window, and her body shook with sobs, though no tears came.
When Mr. Benjamin drove up to the door in the wide surrey behind the fat, dappled horses, she kissed the girls smilingly, she clung to Mrs. Benjamin for a long second, then she took her seat beside her friend. She looked up at them, in the doorway, waving their good-byes.
“If I didn’t know that I was coming back in two years to stay, I couldn’t bear it, mother Benjamin,” she called back. Then the fat horses started off briskly, down the road.
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Miss Vantine’s School for Girls was probably no better and no worse than schools of its kind. It bestowed a superficial training upon its pupils, with an accent upon the social graces. Its graduates were always easily identified by their English a’s, their good diction, their charming manners, and their intensely conventional point of view. Any departure from the Vantine “norm” in the way of investigation or conclusion was discouraged as not nice.
Miss Vantine truly believed in herself as an educator and since her school had held its prestige for thirty years, she had reason to think that other people agreed with her. Her mark on a girl was absolutely guaranteed.
Into this conventional atmosphere Isabelle came from the simple, friendly life of Hill Top; and she found it hateful. It was the spirit rather than the letter which had prevailed in the Benjamin school, but here only the letter counted. The outward forms, correct manners, were emphasized every day; but in the process, the courteous heart was neglected and left out.
The teachers were the custodians of information, and of the law. They bore a perfectly formal relationship to the pupils. Education consisted in pouring facts into the upturned cups—the minds of the pupils. When Isabelle began to question, to dig deeper into the root of things, the why of things—if instead of the usual “Yes, Miss Vantine,” or “No, Miss Vantine,” she demanded basic reasons—the explanation was always repeated, patiently in the same words, and the lesson went on.
Isabelle’s “rough ways” were deplored, and she was reproved every hour in the day. Restraints were imposed on her mind and her body. She was like a healthy, curious young animal, all tied with bonds that she could neither loose nor fight.
As for the girls, there were some old acquaintances among them—Margie Hunter for one. But their talk was of boys, of beaux, and for ever of males! They spent hours conversing about their clothes, or commenting on the manners of their parents and the morals of their parents’ friends. They were deeply interested in the discussion of sex, and there were some phases of the subject dwelt upon which would have sent Miss Vantine down to her grave with the shock, could she have heard their talk.
Now the Benjamins had handled the subject of sex hygiene in their school as a vitally important subject. The girls had been led through the study of botany and zoology, to procreation and the sex relation in human society. Mrs. Benjamin had talked the matter out with her girls with fearless frankness. She had encouraged their questions, she had touched on the pathology of sex, and she had made for them a high ideal of motherhood.
Isabelle realized that the talk of these girls was false and ugly. She said so; and the result was that she was excluded from the intimacy of the leading group. In herletters to Mrs. Benjamin she poured out her whole heart. Protest, misery, loneliness; Mrs. Benjamin sensed them all in the poignant letters the girl sent her. She replied with long, intimate chapters of encouragement and understanding. It was her counsel which kept Isabelle going the first six months of this experience.
She tried with all her might to carry into her daily life the ideals taught and lived at Hill Top. But she seemed to be speaking a language that nobody understood. Her teachers bored her. She found she could keep ahead in her classes with only the most perfunctory study, so the ideal of a high standard for work was the first to go. What was the use? There was not enough to occupy her, so the old restlessness came upon her, with mischievous uses for her excess vitality. She gained a reputation as a law breaker, and she was watched and punished with increasing frequency. Her old leadership in misbehaviour was once more established. The precocious cynicism of her associates began to impress her as clever. She outdid them at it. Mrs. Benjamin’s friendship was her only hope of salvation now. And then, in January, after a brief spell of pneumonia, dear Mrs. Benjamin left the world she had so graced, leaving an aching vacancy behind for her husband and her friends.
To Isabelle it came as her first real sorrow. For weeks after, the girl retired into herself as into a locked room. She could not eat; she did not sleep; she grew thin, and haggard, and pale. Worse than that; in her rebellion at this loss, she grew bitter. She threw this suffering at the feet of God with a threat. She felt herself the victim ofeternal injustice. Just as she achieved happiness, or friendship, it was always snatched from her. Always, before, Max had cheated her of things; now it was God.
She came out of it the Isabelle of her early childhood—révoltée, enemy to authority, defier of God and the universe. Her wit against them all. She would take what she wanted now, and let them look out for her!
From that time on, she was the acknowledged school “terror.” She put her entire mind upon misbehaving, and she was as ingenious as a monkey. Never a week passed that she was not shut up for an hour in the library with Miss Vantine, who always felt, poor lady, that she was dealing with a manifestation of the devil.
“Did you, or did you not throw an electric lamp on the floor during the algebra lesson, Isabelle?”
“Idroppedone on the floor.”
“Don’t equivocate! Youthrewit”—sternly.
“All right; I threw it”—defiantly.
“Why did you do it?”
“To wake up the class. If you knew how dull that hour is you wouldn’t blame me.”
“Don’t be impertinent!”
“Miss Marshall is a fool. If you ask her a question outside the lesson she has to look it up in the book.”
“You are not here to criticize your teachers, you are here to account for your misbehaviour.”
“I am telling you why I misbehave. I can’t listen to her. Nobody does. She sets us all wild. Everybody was half asleep so I bounced the lamp on the floor. She ought to have been grateful to me for getting their attention.”
“This is the second time this week that you have been reported for insubordination. This conduct cannot continue. I am writing your parents to-day that unless you mend your ways, they must take you away from here. You are contaminating the entire school.”
“They can’t take me away too quickly.”
Miss Vantine thought best to ignore this impertinence.
“You will take twenty demerits, and miss your walk in the park for a week. You may go now.”
The girl sauntered insolently out of the room, leaving Miss Vantine white with rage. She wrote a very firm letter to Mrs. Walter Bryce, who in turn wrote a denunciatory letter to her daughter, and there the matter rested.
One disgrace followed another, and finally the school year dragged to a close. Isabelle went to The Beeches for the summer. There were four months of war to the knife with her mother, the usual number of scrapes, and a violent love affair with Herbert Hunter, home from St. George’s.
“What became of your reformed character?” inquired Wally one day. “I thought the Benjamins had made a human being of you.”
“They nearly did. But Max dragged me off and sent me to that fool Vantine, and I got over being human. What’s the use?”
The Bryces were glad when fall came and she was sent back to the school. As for Isabelle she did not much care where she went. There was a certain satisfaction—anesprit de diablerie—which amused her. Sharp of tongueand of wit, she knew she had a real gift for making herself a nuisance, and she took pride in it.
Miss Vantine warned her at the beginning of the term that she was a marked character, and that unless she behaved herself she could not stay. She tempered her behaviour somewhat during the first term, but it was no use. Like every dog with a bad name, all the mischief in the school was attributed to her. According to schoolgirl canons of loyalty it was an unforgivable sin to tell tales or “give people away,” so Isabelle shouldered the iniquity of the whole school. The teachers hated and feared her.