PETER ELUCIDATES
It was Peter who got at the heart of the trouble. Margaret tried, but
though Eleanor clung to her and relaxed under the balm of her gentle
caresses, the child remained entirely inarticulate until Peter
gathered her up in his arms, and signed to the others that he wished
to be left alone with her.
By the time he rejoined the two in the drawing-room--he had missed his
after-dinner coffee in the long half-hour that he had spent shut into
the guest room with the child--Jimmie and Gertrude had arrived, and
the four sat grouped together to await his pronouncement.
"She thinks she has adenoids. She wants the doll that David left in
that carpetbag of hers he forgot to take out of the 'Handsome cab.'
She wants to be loved, and she wants to grow up and write poetry for
the newspapers," he announced. "Also she will eat a piece of bread and
butter and a glass of milk, as soon as it can conveniently be provided
for her."
"When did you take holy orders, Gram?" Jimmie inquired. "How do you
work the confessional? I wish I could make anybody give anything up to
me, but I can't. Did you just go into that darkened chamber and say to
the kid, 'Child of my adoption,--cough,' and she coughed, or are you
the master of some subtler system of choking the truth out of 'em?"
"Anybody would tell anything to Peter if he happened to want to know
it," Margaret said seriously. "Wouldn't they, Beulah?"
Beulah nodded. "She wants to be loved," Peter had said. It was so
simple for some people to open their hearts and give out
love,--easily, lightly. She was not made like that,--loving came hard
with her, but when once she had given herself, it was done. Peter
didn't know how hard she had tried to do right with the child that
day.
"The doll is called the rabbit doll, though there is no reason why it
should be, as it only looks the least tiny bit like a rabbit, and is a
girl. Its other name is Gwendolyn, and it always goes to bed with her.
Mrs. O'Farrels aunt said that children always stopped playing with
dolls when they got to be as big as Eleanor, but she isn't never
going to stop.--You must get after that double negative, Beulah.--She
once wrote a poem beginning: 'The rabbit doll, it is my own.' She
thinks that she has a frog-like expression of face, and that is why
Beulah doesn't like her better. She is perfectly willing to have her
adenoids cut out, if Beulah thinks it would improve her, but she
doesn't want to 'take anything,' when she has it done."
"You are a wonder, Gram," Gertrude said admiringly.
"Oh! I have made a mess of it, haven't I?" Beulah said. "Is she
homesick?"
"Yes, she's homesick," Peter said gravely, "but not for anything she's
left in Colhassett. David told you the story, didn't he?--She is
homesick for her own kind, for people she can really love, and she's
never found any of them. Her grandfather and grandmother are old and
decrepit. She feels a terrible responsibility for them, but she
doesn't love them, not really. She's too hungry to love anybody until
she finds the friends she can cling to--without compromise."
"An emotional aristocrat," Gertrude murmured. "It's the curse of
taste."
"Help! Help!" Jimmie cried, grimacing at Gertrude. "Didn't she have
any kids her own age to play with?"
"She had 'em, but she didn't have any time to play with them. You
forget she was supporting a family all the time, Jimmie."
"By jove, I'd like to forget it."
"She had one friend named Albertina Weston that she used to run around
with in school. Albertina also wrote poetry. They used to do poetic
'stunts' of one poem a day on some subject selected by Albertina. I
think Albertina was a snob. She candidly admitted to Eleanor that if
her clothes were more stylish, she would go round with her more.
Eleanor seemed to think that was perfectly natural."
"How do you do it, Peter?" Jimmie besought. "If I could get one
damsel, no matter how tender her years, to confide in me like that I'd
be happy for life. It's nothing to you with those eyes, and that
matinée forehead of yours; but I want 'em to weep down my neck, and I
can't make 'em do it."
"Wait till you grow up, Jimmie, and then see what happens," Gertrude
soothed him.
"Wait till it's your turn with our child," Margaret said. "In two
months more she's coming to you."
"Do I ever forget it for a minute?" Jimmie cried.
"The point of the whole business is," Peter continued, "that we've got
a human soul on our hands. We imported a kind of scientific plaything
to exercise our spiritual muscle on, and we've got a real specimen of
womanhood in embryo. I don't know whether the situation appalls you as
much as it does me--" He broke off as he heard the bell ring.
"That's David, he said he was coming."
Then as David appeared laden with the lost carpetbag and a huge box of
chocolates, he waved him to a chair, and took up his speech again. "I
don't know whether the situation appalls you, as much as it does
me--if I don't get this off my chest now, David, I can't do it at
all--but the thought of that poor little waif in there and the
struggle she's had, and the shy valiant spirit of her,--the sand that
she's got, the _sand_ that put her through and kept her mouth shut
through experiences that might easily have killed her, why I feel as
if I'd give anything I had in the world to make it up to her, and yet
I'm not altogether sure that I could--that we could--that it's any of
our business to try it."
"There's nobody else who will, if we don't," David said.
"That's it," Peter said, "I've never known any one of our bunch to
quit anything that they once started in on, but just by way of
formality there is one thing we ought to do about this proposition
before we slide into it any further, and that is to agree that we want
to go on with it, that we know what we're in for, and that we're
game."
"We decided all that before we sent for the kid," Jimmie said, "didn't
we?"
"We decided we'd adopt a child, but we didn't decide we'd adopt this
one. Taking the responsibility of this one is the question before the
house just at present."
"The idea being," David added, "that she's a fairly delicate piece of
work, and as time advances she's going to be _delicater_."
"And that it's an awkward matter to play with souls," Beulah
contributed; whereupon Jimmie murmured, "Browning," sotto voice.
"She may be all that you say, Gram," Jimmie said, after a few minutes
of silence, "a thunderingly refined and high-minded young waif, but
you will admit that without an interpreter of the same class, she
hasn't been much good to us so far."
"Good lord, she isn't refined and high-minded," Peter said. "That's
not the idea. She's simply supremely sensitive and full of the most
pathetic possibilities. If we're going to undertake her we ought to
realize fully what we're up against, and acknowledge it,--that's all
I'm trying to say, and I apologize for assuming that it's more my
business than anybody's to say it."
"That charming humility stuff, if I could only remember to pull it."
The sofa pillow that Gertrude aimed at Jimmie hit him full on the
mouth and he busied himself pretending to eat it. Beulah scorned the
interruption.
"Of course, we're going to undertake her," Beulah said. "We are signed
up and it's all down in writing. If anybody has any objections, they
can state them now." She looked about her dramatically. On every young
face was reflected the same earnestness that set gravely on her own.
"The 'ayes' have it," Jimmie murmured. "From now on I become not only
a parent, but a soul doctor." He rose, and tiptoed solemnly toward the
door of Eleanor's room.
"Where are you going, Jimmie?" Beulah called, as he was disappearing
around the bend in the corridor.
He turned back to lift an admonitory finger.
"Shush," he said, "do not interrupt me. I am going to wrap baby up in
a blanket and bring her out to her mothers and fathers."