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 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 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 of eternal
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--_revoltee_,
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?"
"I _dropped_ one on the floor."
"Don't equivocate! You _threw_ it"--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--an _esprit de diablerie_--which amused her. Sharp
of tongue and 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.
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 role.
"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."