Chapter 4

Eleanor Bartlett, speeding home from the hospital with Captain Phipps beside her, repeated Quin's question to herself more than once. Up to the present her loves, like her friendships, had been entirely episodic. She had gone easily from one affair to another not so much from fickleness as from growth. What she wanted on Monday did not seem in the least desirable on Saturday, and it was a new and disturbing sensation to have the same person dominating her thoughts for so many consecutive days. If her relations with the young officer from Chicago were as platonic as she would have herself and her family believe, why had she allowed the affair to arrive at a stage that precipitated her banishment? Why was she even now flying in the face of authority and risking a serious reprimand by letting him ride in her car?

In fierce justification she told herself it was simply because the family had meddled. If they had not interfered, things would never have reached the danger mark. She had met Captain Phipps three weeks ago at her Uncle Randolph Bartlett's, and had at first not been sure that she liked him. He had seemed then a little superior and condescending, and had evidently considered her too young to be interesting. But the next time they met there Aunt Flo had made her do the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet," and since then all had been different.

Captain Phipps had not only monopolized her at the dances--he had also found time from his not over-arduous military duties to drop in on her frequently in the afternoons. For hours at a time they had sat in the long, dim Bartlett parlor, with only the ghostly bust of old Madam Bartlett for a chaperon, ostensibly absorbed in the study of modern drama, but finding ample time to dwell at length upon Eleanor's qualifications for the stage and the Captain's budding genius as a playwright. And just when Ibsen and Pinero were giving place to Sudermann, and vague personal ambitions were crystallizing into definite plans, the family interfered.

The causes of their condemnation were as varied as they were numerous. He was ten years older than Eleanor; he was too sophisticated a companion for a young girl; he had taken her to a public dance-hall on New Year's eve, where she had been seen dancing with an unknown private; he had been quite insolent to Madam when she had taken him to task for it; and, most heinous of all, he was encouraging her in her ambition to go on the stage. And beneath it all, Eleanor knew quite well, was the nervous flutter of apprehension that seized the entire family whenever a threatening masculine presence loomed on the horizon.

She stole a glance at her handsome companion, and, seeing that he was observing her, quickly lowered her eyes. The Captain had a flattering way of studying her poses, remarking on the lines of her gowns and her hats. He was constantly discovering interesting things about her that she had not known before. But sometimes, as now, she was restive under his too close scrutiny.

"So you are actually going to leave me next week?" he asked, with a note of personal aggrievement.

"To leave you? I like that! If it weren't for you I shouldn't be going."

"Are they really sending you away on my account?"

"Indeed they are. Grandmother says you are encouraging me about the stage, and that poor Papa Claude is demoralizing us both."

"Isn't that absurd?" said the Captain. "Dear old C. M. is about as innocuous as a peacock. Madam Bartlett should have been born in the seventeenth century. What will she say when she sees your name blazing over a Broadway theater?"

"In one of your plays! Oh, Captain, wouldn't that be glorious?"

"Haven't I asked you to drop the 'Captain'? My name is Harold. Say it!"

"No; I can't."

"Yes, you can. Come!"

But she defied him with tightly closed lips and dancing eyes. With feminine instinct she had discovered that the irresistible Captain was piqued and stimulated by the unusual taste of opposition.

"You little minx!" he said, lifting an accusing finger. "Those eyes of yours are going to do a lot of damage before they get through with it."

Eleanor took kindly to the thought that she was dangerous. If she could cause disturbance to an individual by the guarded flutter of her eyelids, what effect might she not produce by giving them full play before a larger audience?

"Do you really think I could act if I got the chance?" she asked dreamily.

"I am absolutely sure. Your grandfather's quite right when he says you were born to the footlights. With your voice and your unusual coloring and your plastic little body----"

"But you can't imagine the opposition," Eleanor broke in. "It isn't as if my mother and father were living. I believe they would understand. But grandfather and the aunties, and even Uncle Ranny, throw a fit at the mere mention of the stage."

"You do not belong to them," said the Captain impatiently. "You do not even belong to yourself. A great talent belongs to the world. All these questions will settle themselves, once you take the definite step."

"And you actually believe that I will get to New York to study?"

"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 assurance 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 gratitude 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 butterfly 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.