The Cricket Part 36

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, pa.s.sionate 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 by the 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 appet.i.te 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 call roused 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.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

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 relations.h.i.+p 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 s.e.x, 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 s.e.x 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 s.e.x 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 s.e.x, 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 her letters 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 n.o.body understood. Her teachers bored her. She found she could keep ahead in her cla.s.ses 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 leaders.h.i.+p in misbehaviour was once more established.

The precocious cynicism of her a.s.sociates began to impress her as clever. She outdid them at it. Mrs. Benjamin's friends.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d with a threat. She felt herself the victim of eternal injustice. Just as she achieved happiness, or friends.h.i.+p, it was always s.n.a.t.c.hed from her. Always, before, Max had cheated her of things; now it was G.o.d.

She came out of it the Isabelle of her early childhood--_revoltee_, enemy to authority, defier of G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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?"

"I _dropped_ one on the floor."