"I don"t believe--I _know_. I intend to make it my business to see that you do."
There was a confident ring of masterful a.s.surance in his voice that carried delicious conviction. A person who was so absolutely sure of himself made other people sure of him, too, for the moment.
Eleanor, sitting low in the car, with her absent eyes fixed on the road ahead, lapsed into a daydream. From an absorbed contemplation of herself and her dramatic career, her mind veered in grat.i.tude to the one who most believed in its possibility. What a friend he had been! Just when she had been ready to give up in despair, he had fanned her dying hope into a glorious blaze that illuminated every waking hour. And it was not only his sympathetic interest in her thwarted ambition that touched her: it was also the fact that he had rescued her from the daily boredom of sitting with elderly ladies making interminable surgical dressings, and by an adroit bit of diplomacy outwitted the family and introduced her as a ward visitor at the camp hospital.
The mere thought of the hospital sent her mind flying off at a tangent.
Even the stage gave way for the moment to this new and all-absorbing occupation. Never in her life had she done anything so interesting. The escape from home, the personal contact with all those nice, jolly boys, the excitement of being of service for the first time in her b.u.t.terfly existence, was intoxicating. She smiled now as she thought of the way Graham"s eager head always popped up the moment she entered the door, and of how his face shone when she talked to him. After all, she told herself, there _was_ something thrilling in having hands that had captured a machine-gun laboriously threading tiny beads for her, in having a soldier who had been decorated for courage stammer and blush in her presence.
"Well," said the Captain, who had been lazily observing her, "aren"t you about through with your mental monologue?"
Eleanor roused herself with a start.
"Oh, I am sorry! I was thinking about my boys at the hospital. You can"t imagine how I hate to leave them!"
The answer was evidently not what the Captain had expected. As long as his company of feminine admirers marched in adoring unison he was indifferent to their existence; but let one miss step and he was instantly on the alert.
"I haven"t noticed any tears being shed over leaving me," he said, and the aggrieved note in his voice promptly stirred her humor.
"Why should I mind leaving you? You don"t need me."
"How do you know?"
She looked at him scoffingly.
"You don"t need anything or anybody. You"ve got all you want in yourself."
"I"ll show you what I want!" he said, and, quickly bending toward her, he kissed her on the cheek.
It was the merest brush of his lips, but it brought the color flaming into her face and the lightning into her eyes. She had never been so angry in her life, and it seemed to her an age that she sat there rigid and indignant, suffocated by his nearness but powerless to move away.
Then she got the car stopped, and announced with great dignity that she was nearly home and that she would have to ask him to get out.
Captain Phipps lazily descended from the car, then stood with elbows on the ledge of the door and rolled a cigarette with great deliberation.
Eleanor, in spite of her wrath, could not help admiring the graceful, conscious movement of his slender hands with their highly polished nails.
It was not until he had struck his match that he looked at her and smiled quizzically.
"What a dear little goose you are! Do you suppose that stage lovers are going to stand in the wings and throw kisses to you?"
"No," said Eleanor hotly; "but that will be different."
"It certainly will," he agreed amiably. "You will not only have to be kissed, but you will have to kiss back. You have a lot of little puritanical prejudices to get over, my dear, before you can ever hope to act. You don"t want to be a thin-blooded little old maid, do you?"
The shot was well aimed, for Eleanor had no desire to follow in the arid footsteps of her two spinster aunts. She looked at Captain Phipps unsteadily and shook her head.
"Of course you don"t," he encouraged her. "You aren"t built for it.
Besides, it"s an actress"s business to cultivate her emotions rather than repress them, isn"t it?"
"Yes, I suppose it is."
"Then, for heaven"s sake, obey your impulses and let other people obey theirs. From now on you are to be identified with a profession that transcends the petty conventions of society. Confess! Aren"t you already a little ashamed of getting angry with me just now?"
She was not ashamed, not in the least; but her ardent desire to prove her fitness for that coveted profession, together with the compelling insistence of that persuasive voice, prompted her to hold out a reluctant hand and to smile.
"You are a darling child!" said Captain Phipps, with a level glance of approval. "I shall see you to-morrow. When? Where?"
But she would make no engagement. She was in a flutter to be gone. It was her first experience at dancing on a precipice, and, while she liked it, she could not deny, even to herself, that at times it made her uncomfortably hot and dizzy.
CHAPTER 5
Eleanor"s thoughts were still in a turmoil as she slowed her car to a within-the-law limit of speed and brought it to a dignified halt before an imposing edifice on Third Avenue. The precaution was well taken, for a long, pale face that had been pressed to a front window promptly transferred itself to the front door, and an anxious voice called out:
"Oh, Nellie, _why_ did you stay out so late? Didn"t you know it was your duty to be in before five?"
"It"s not late, Aunt Isobel," said Eleanor impatiently. "It gets dark early, that"s all."
"And you must be frozen," persisted Miss Isobel, "with those thin pumps and silk stockings, and nothing but that veil on your head."
"But I"m _hot!_" declared Eleanor, throwing open her coat. "The house is stifling. Can"t we have a window open?"
Miss Isobel sighed. Like the rest of the family, she never knew what to expect from this troublesome, adorable, disturbing mystery called Eleanor. She worshiped her with the solicitous, over-anxious care that saw fever in the healthy flush of youth, regarded a sneeze as premonitory of consumption, and waited with dark cert.i.tude for the "something dreadful" that instinct told her was ever about to happen to her darling.
"I am afraid your grandmother is terribly upset about your staying out so late," she said, with a note of warning in her voice.
"What made you tell her?" demanded Eleanor.
"Because she asked me, and of course I could not deceive her. I don"t believe you know how hard it is to keep things from her."
"_Don"t_ I!" said Eleanor, with the tolerant smile of a professional for an amateur. "Well, a few minutes more won"t make any difference. I"ll go and change my dress."
"No, dear; you must go to her first. She"s been sending Hannah down every few minutes to see if you were here."
"Oh, dear! I suppose I"m in for it!" sighed Eleanor, flinging her coat across the banister. Then, in answer to a plaintive voice from the library, "Yes, Aunt Enid?"
"Why on earth are you so late, sweetheart? Didn"t you know your grandmother would be fretted?"
The possessor of the plaintive voice emerged from the library, trailing an Oriental scarf as she came. Like her elder sister, she was tall and thin, but she did not wear Miss Isobel"s look of martyred resignation. On the contrary, she had the starved look of one who is constantly trying to pick up the crumbs of interest that other people let fall.
Enid Bartlett might have pa.s.sed for a pretty woman had her appearance not been permanently affected by an artist once telling her she looked like a Botticelli. Since that time she had done queer things to her hair, pursed her lips, and cultivated an expression of chronic yearning.
"I haven"t seen you since breakfast, Nellie," she said gently. "Haven"t you a kiss for me?"
Eleanor presented a perfunctory cheek over the banisters, taking care that it was not the one that had been kissed a few minutes before.
"Remember your promise," Aunt Enid whispered; "don"t forget that your grandmother is an old lady and you must not excite her."