The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [169]
“But why can’t I go to school with Hannah and Rachel?” Azaylee stormed, torrents of tears flowing down her face. “Why must I be taught at home, all by myself? I miss school and I miss the other kids…. Why are you doing this to me?”
“It’s only temporary,” Missie said, hedging, “just for a little while. I cannot tell you the reason now, but believe me it’s for the best.”
Azaylee stared at her mutely, her luminous pansy-gold eyes brimming, and then she turned and ran upstairs to her room. When she refused to come down for supper, Missie took her up a tray. She was lying on her bed and when she saw her she turned her head away, staring out of the window.
“Come, milochka,” Missie coaxed, “you must eat supper or you’ll be hungry in the middle of the night.”
“I’m not hungry,” Azaylee said distantly.
“But you should eat something,” Missie urged. “If you are to be a dancer you’ll need to be strong.”
“I’m not going to be a dancer,” she muttered, flinging her arm across her eyes so she would not have to look at Missie.
Missie watched her uncertainly for a moment, and then she put the tray on the table and said quietly, “I’m truly sorry, Azaylee. I wish I didn’t have to do this but right now I do. I know that’s hard for a little girl to understand, but that’s the way it is. Meanwhile, please try to eat your supper.” She hesitated, her hand on the doorknob, and added, “Maybe you’ll want to come downstairs afterward. Mrs. Grant has promised to play the piano and the Bathing Beauties are going to rehearse their new act for us.”
Normally Azaylee would have been galvanized into activity by such information, but now she simply turned her face away again and said nothing.
Later, when Missie went in to kiss her good night, the food was still untouched and Azaylee seemed to be sleeping. She stared at her worriedly for a few moments and then carried the tray back down to the kitchen.
Azaylee appeared at breakfast the next morning looking subdued and pale. She drank a glass of milk and drifted listlessly across the lawn to Rosemont’s dining room, where Miss Valerian, her tutor, was waiting.
“All the spirit has gone out of her!” Rosa cried, horrified. “What have we done, Missie?”
She shook her head, scared. Azaylee looked just the way her mother, Anouska, used to look when she retreated into that world of her own where no one could reach her, and from which each time she seemed more and more reluctant to return.
It was the boarders who finally coaxed Azaylee out of her depression, joining in her lessons and making her laugh with their silly pretend-schoolgirl errors. Millie lent her her latest copy of Photoplay and the Bathing Beauties showed her their new stills, taken on the beach at Santa Monica with Mack Sennett himself right in the middle between Ruth and Marie. And Lilian and Mary told her they would not go to dance class unless she went too, so of course she went. But Missie knew for certain it had been touch and go and that Azaylee was as capable of great swings in mood as Anouska.
They were sitting around the porch a few weeks later when Dick Nevern tossed aside the newspaper he was reading and said, “Imagine that, a young kid of fourteen inheriting all that money. A fortune—more than I’ll ever make as a director, no matter how successful I am.”
“More than Mary Pickford?” asked Millie Travers, who knew all about the stars’ contracts as well as the details of their domestic lives as recounted by the movie magazines.
“Millions more than Pickford or Chaplin or any of them,” Nevern retorted.
“So, who is he, this fourteen-year-old millionaire?” Rosa asked interestedly. “Maybe he’ll do for my Hannah?”
Nevern picked up the newspaper again and read the headline: “Son of German Steel Baron Inherits All After Fatal Accident.
“Baron Eddie Arnhaldt was killed yesterday in an automobile accident that also took the lives of his friend,