MADAM BOLLING
"Is this the child, David?"
"Yes, mother."
Eleanor stared impassively into the lenses of Mrs. Bolling's
lorgnette.
"This is my mother, Eleanor."
Eleanor courtesied as her Uncle Jimmie had taught her, but she did not
take her eyes from Mrs. Bolling's face.
"Not a bad-looking child. I hate this American fashion of dressing
children like French dolls, in bright colors and smart lines. The
English are so much more sensible. An English country child would have
cheeks as red as apples. How old are you?"
"Eleven years old my next birthday."
"I should have thought her younger, David. Have her call me madam. It
sounds better."
"Very well, mother. I'll teach her the ropes when the strangeness
begins to wear off. This kind of thing is all new to her, you know."
"She looks it. Give her the blue chamber and tell Mademoiselle to
take charge of her. You say you want her to have lessons for so many
hours a day. Has she brains?"
"She's quite clever. She writes verses, she models pretty well,
Gertrude says. It's too soon to expect any special aptitude to
develop."
"Well, I'm glad to discover your philanthropic tendencies, David. I
never knew you had any before, but this seems to me a very doubtful
undertaking. You take a child like this from very plain surroundings
and give her a year or two of life among cultivated and well-to-do
people, just enough for her to acquire a taste for extravagant living
and associations. Then what becomes of her? You get tired of your
bargain. Something else comes on the docket. You marry--and then what
becomes of your protégée? She goes back to the country, a thoroughly
unsatisfied little rustic, quite unfitted to be the wife of the farmer
for whom fate intended her."
"I wish you wouldn't, mother," David said, with an uneasy glance at
Eleanor's pale face, set in the stoic lines he remembered so well from
the afternoon of his first impression of her. "She's a sensitive
little creature."
"Nonsense. It never hurts anybody to have a plain understanding of his
position in the world. I don't know what foolishness you romantic
young people may have filled her head with. It's just as well she
should hear common sense from me and I intend that she shall."
"I've explained to you, mother, that this child is my legal and moral
responsibility and will be partly at least under my care until she
becomes of age. I want her to be treated as you'd treat a child of
mine if I had one. If you don't, I can't have her visit us again. I
shall take her away with me somewhere. Bringing her home to you this
time is only an experiment."
"She'll have a much more healthful and normal experience with us than
she's had with any of the rest of your violent young set, I'll be
bound. She'll probably be useful, too. She can look out for Zaidee--I
never say that name without irritation--but it's the only name the
little beast will answer to. Do you like dogs, child?"
Eleanor started at the suddenness of the question, but did not reply
to it. Mrs. Bolling waited and David looked at her expectantly.
"My mother asked you if you liked dogs, Eleanor; didn't you
understand?"
Eleanor opened her lips as if to speak and then shut them again
firmly.
"Your protégée is slightly deaf, David," his mother assured him.
"You can tell her 'yes,'" Eleanor said unexpectedly to David. "I like
dogs, if they ain't treacherous."
"She asked you the question," David said gravely; "this is her house,
you know. It is she who deserves consideration in it."
"Why can't I talk to you about her, the way she does about me?"
Eleanor demanded. "She can have consideration if she wants it, but she
doesn't think I'm any account. Let her ask you what she wants and I'll
tell you."
"Eleanor," David remonstrated, "Eleanor, you never behaved like this
before. I don't know what's got into her, mother."
"She merely hasn't any manners. Why should she have?"
Eleanor fixed her big blue eyes on the lorgnette again.
"If it's manners to talk the way you do to your own children and
strange little girls, why, then I don't want any," she said. "I guess
I'll be going," she added abruptly and turned toward the door.
David took her by the shoulders and brought her right about face.
"Say good-by to mother," he said sternly.
"Good-by, ma'am--madam," Eleanor said and courtesied primly.
"Tell Mademoiselle to teach her a few things before the next audience,
David, and come back to me in fifteen minutes. I have something
important to talk over with you."
David stood by the open door of the blue chamber half an hour later
and watched Eleanor on her knees, repacking her suit-case. Her face
was set in pale determined lines, and she looked older and a little
sick. Outside it was blowing a September gale, and the trees were
waving desperate branches in the wind. David had thought that the
estate on the Hudson would appeal to the little girl. It had always
appealed to him so much, even though his mother's habits of migration
with the others of her flock at the different seasons had left him so
comparatively few associations with it. He had thought she would like
the broad sweeping lawns and the cherubim fountain, the apple orchard
and the kitchen garden, and the funny old bronze dog at the end of the
box hedge. When he saw how she was occupied, he understood that it was
not her intention to stay and explore these things.
"Eleanor," he said, stepping into the room suddenly, "what are you
doing with your suit-case? Didn't Mademoiselle unpack it for you?" He
was close enough now to see the signs of tears she had shed.
"Yes, Uncle David."
"Why are you packing it again?"
Her eyes fell and she tried desperately to control a quivering lip.
"Because I am--I want to go back."
"Back where?"
"To Cape Cod."
"Why, Eleanor?"
"I ain't wanted," she said, her head low. "I made up my mind to go
back to my own folks. I'm not going to be adopted any more."
David led her to the deep window-seat and made her sit facing him. He
was too wise to attempt a caress with this issue between them.
"Do you think that's altogether fair to me?" he asked presently.
"I guess it won't make much difference to you. Something else will
come along."
"Do you think it will be fair to your other aunts and uncles who have
given so much care and thought to your welfare?"
"They'll get tired of their bargain."
"If they do get tired of their bargain it will be because they've
turned out to be very poor sports. I've known every one of them a long
time, and I've never known them to show any signs of poor
sportsmanship yet. If you run away without giving them their chance to
make good, it will be you who are the poor sport."
"She said you would marry and get tired of me, and I would have to go
back to the country. If you marry and Uncle Jimmie marries--then Uncle
Peter will marry, and--"
"You'd still have your Aunts Beulah and Margaret and Gertrude," David
could not resist making the suggestion.
"They could do it, too. If one person broke up the vow, I guess they
all would. Misfortunes never come singly."
"But even if we did, Eleanor, even if we all married, we'd still
regard you as our own, our child, our charge."
"_She_ said you wouldn't." The tears came now, and David gathered the
little shaking figure to his breast. "I don't want to be the wife of
the farmer for whom fate intended me," she sobbed. "I want to marry
somebody refined with extravagant living and associations."
"That's one of the things we are bringing you up for, my dear." This
aspect of the case occurred to David for the first time, but he
realized its potency. "You mustn't take mother too seriously. Just
jolly her along a little and you'll soon get to be famous friends.
She's never had any little girls of her own, only my brother and me,
and she doesn't know quite how to talk to them."
"The Hutchinsons had a hired butler and gold spoons, and they didn't
think I was the dust beneath their feet. I don't know what to say to
her. I said ain't, and I wasn't refined, and I'll only just be a
disgrace to you. I'd rather go back to Cape Cod, and go out to work,
and stand Albertina and everything."
"If you think it's the square thing to do," David said slowly, "you
may go, Eleanor. I'll take you to New York to-morrow and get one of
the girls to take you to Colhassett. Of course, if you do that it will
put me in rather an awkward position. The others have all had you for
two months and made good on the proposition. I shall have to admit
that I couldn't even keep you with me twenty-four hours. Peter and
Jimmie got along all right, but I couldn't handle you at all. As a
cooperative parent, I'm such a failure that the whole experiment goes
to pieces through me."
"Not you--her."
"Well, it's the same thing,--you couldn't stand the surroundings I
brought you to. You couldn't even be polite to my mother for my
sake."
"I--never thought of that, Uncle David."
"Think of it now for a few minutes, won't you, Eleanor?"
The rain was beginning to lash the windows, and to sweep the lawn in
long slant strokes. The little girl held up her face as if it could
beat through the panes on it.
"I thought," she said slowly, "that after Albertina I wouldn't _take_
anything from anybody. Uncle Peter says that I'm just as good as
anybody, even if I have been out to work. He said that all I had to do
was just to stand up to people."
"There are a good many different ways of standing up to people,
Eleanor. Be sure you've got the right way and then go ahead."
"I guess I ought to have been politer," Eleanor said slowly. "I ought
to have thought that she was your own mother. You couldn't help the
way she acted, o' course."
"The way you acted is the point, Eleanor."
Eleanor reflected.
"I'll act different if you want me to, Uncle David," she said, "and I
won't go and leave you."
"That's my brave girl. I don't think that I altogether cover myself
with glory in an interview with my mother," he added. "It isn't the
thing that I'm best at, I admit."
"You did pretty good," Eleanor consoled him. "I guess she makes you
kind of bashful the way she does me," from which David gathered with
an odd sense of shock that Eleanor felt there was something to
criticize in his conduct, if she had permitted herself to look for
it.
"I know what I'll do," Eleanor decided dreamily with her nose against
the pane. "I'll just pretend that she's Mrs. O'Farrel's aunt, and then
whatever she does, I shan't care. I'll know that I'm the strongest and
could hit her if I had a mind to, and then I shan't want to."
David contemplated her gravely for several seconds.
"By the time you grow up, Eleanor," he said finally, "you will have
developed all your cooperative parents into fine strong characters.
Your educational methods are wonderful."
* * * * *
"The dog got nearly drownded today in the founting," Eleanor wrote.
"It is a very little dog about the size of Gwendolyn. It was out with
Mademoiselle, and so was I, learning French on a garden seat. It
teetered around on the edge of the big wash basin--the founting looks
like a wash basin, and suddenly it fell in. I waded right in and got
it, but it slipped around so I couldn't get it right away. It looked
almost too dead to come to again, but I gave it first aid to the
drownded the way Uncle Jimmie taught me to practicing on Gwendolyn.
When I got it fixed I looked up and saw Uncle David's mother coming. I
took the dog and gave it to her. I said, 'Madam, here's your dog.'
Mademoiselle ran around ringing her hands and talking about it. Then I
went up to Mrs. Bolling's room, and we talked. I told her how to make
mustard pickles, and how my mother's grandpa's relation came over in
the Mayflower, and about our single white lilac bush, and she's going
to get one and make the pickles. Then I played double Canfield with
her for a while. I'm glad I didn't go home before I knew her better.
When she acts like Mrs. O'Farrel's aunt I pretend she is her, and we
don't quarrel. She says does Uncle David go much to see Aunt Beulah,
and I say, not so often as Uncle Jimmie does. Then she says does he go
to see Aunt Margaret, and I say that he goes to see Uncle Peter the
most. Well, if he doesn't he almost does. You can't tell Mrs. Madam
Bolling that you won't tattle, because she would think the worst."
* * * * *
Eleanor grew to like Mademoiselle. She was the aging, rather wry
faced Frenchwoman who had been David's young brother's governess and
had made herself so useful to Mrs. Bolling that she was kept always on
the place, half companion and half resident housekeeper. She was glad
to have a child in charge again, and Eleanor soon found that her
crooked features and severe high-shouldered back that had somewhat
intimidated her at first, actually belonged to one of the kindest
hearted creatures in the world.
Paris and Colhassett bore very little resemblance to each other, the
two discovered. To be sure there were red geraniums every alternating
year in the gardens of the Louvre, and every year in front of the
Sunshine Library in Colhassett. The residents of both places did a
great deal of driving in fine weather. In Colhassett they drove on the
state highway, recently macadamized to the dismay of the taxpayers who
did not own horses or automobiles. In Paris they drove out to the Bois
by way of the Champs Elysees. In Colhassett they had only one
ice-cream saloon, but in Paris they had a good many of them
out-of-doors in the parks and even on the sidewalk, and there you
could buy all kinds of sirups and 'what you call cordials' and
_aperitifs_; but the two places on the whole were quite different. The
people were different, too. The people of Colhassett were all
religious and thought it was sinful to play cards on Sundays.
Mademoiselle said she always felt wicked when she played them on a
week day.
"I think of my mother," she said; "she would say 'Juliette, what will
you say to the Lord when he knows that you have been playing cards on
a working day. Playing cards is for Sunday.'"
"The Lord that they have in Colhassett is not like that," Eleanor
stated without conscious irreverence.
"She is a vary fonny child, madam," Mademoiselle answered Mrs.
Bolling's inquiry. "She has taste, but no--experience even of the most
ordinary. She cooks, but she does no embroidery. She knits and knows
no games to play. She has a good brain, but Mon Dieu, no one has
taught her to ask questions with it."
"She has had lessons this year from some young Rogers graduates, very
intelligent girls. I should think a year of that kind of training
would have had its effect." Mrs. Bolling's finger went into every pie
in her vicinity with unfailing direction.
"Lessons, yes, but no teaching. If she were not vary intelligent I
think she would have suffered for it. The public schools they did
somesing, but so little to elevate--to encourage."
Thus in a breath were Beulah's efforts as an educator disposed of.
"Would you like to undertake the teaching of that child for a year?"
Mrs. Bolling asked thoughtfully.
"Oh! but yes, madam."
"I think I'll make the offer to David."
Mrs. Bolling was unsympathetic but she was thorough. She liked to see
things properly done. Since David and his young friends had undertaken
a venture so absurd, she decided to lend them a helping hand with it.
Besides, now that she had no children of her own in the house,
Mademoiselle was practically eating her head off. Also it had
developed that David was fond of the child, so fond of her that to
oppose that affection would have been bad policy, and Mrs. Bolling was
politic when she chose to be. She chose to be politic now, for
sometime during the season she was going to ask a very great favor of
David, and she hoped, that by first being extraordinarily complaisant
and kind and then by bringing considerable pressure to bear upon him,
he would finally do what he was asked. The favor was to provide
himself with a father-in-law, and that father-in-law the
multi-millionaire parent of the raven-haired, crafty-eyed ingénue, who
had begun angling for him that June night at the country club.
She made the suggestion to David on the eve of the arrival of all of
Eleanor's guardians for the week-end. Mrs. Bolling had invited a
house-party comprised of the associated parents as a part of her
policy of kindness before the actual summoning of her forces for the
campaign she was about to inaugurate.
David was really touched by his mother's generosity concerning
Eleanor. He had been agreeably surprised at the development of the
situation between the child and his mother. He had been obliged to go
into town the day after Eleanor's first unfortunate encounter with her
hostess, and had hurried home in fear and trembling to try to smooth
out any tangles in the skein of their relationship that might have
resulted from a day in each other's vicinity. After hurrying over the
house and through the grounds in search of her he finally discovered
the child companionably currying a damp and afflicted Pekinese in his
mother's sitting-room, and engaged in a grave discussion of the
relative merits of molasses and sugar as a sweetening for Boston baked
beans.
It was while they were having their after-dinner coffee in the
library, for which Eleanor had been allowed to come down, though
nursery supper was the order of the day in the Bolling establishment,
that David told his friends of his mother's offer.
"Of course, we decided to send her to school when she was twelve
anyway," he said. "The idea was to keep her among ourselves for two
years to establish the parental tie, or ties I should say. If she is
quartered here with Mademoiselle we could still keep in touch with her
and she would be having the advantage of a year's steady tuition under
one person, and we'd be relieved--" a warning glance from Margaret,
with an almost imperceptible inclination of her head in the direction
of Beulah, caused him to modify the end of his sentence--"of the
responsibility--for her physical welfare."
"Mentally and morally," Gertrude cut in, "the bunch would still
supervise her entirely."
Jimmie, who was sitting beside her, ran his arm along the back of her
chair affectionately, and then thought better of it and drew it away.
He was, for some unaccountable reason, feeling awkward and not like
himself. There was a girl in New York, with whom he was not in the
least in love, who had recently taken it upon herself to demonstrate
unmistakably that she was not in love with him. There was another girl
who insisted on his writing her every day. Here was Gertrude, who
never had any time for him any more, absolutely without enthusiasm at
his proximity. He thought it would be a good idea to allow Eleanor to
remain where she was and said so.
"Not that I won't miss the jolly times we had together, Babe," he
said. "I was planning some real rackets this year,--to make up for
what I put you through," he added in her ear, as she came and stood
beside him for a minute.
Gertrude wanted to go abroad for a year, "and lick her wounds," as she
told herself. She would have come back for her two months with
Eleanor, but she was glad to be relieved of that necessity. Margaret
had the secret feeling that the ordeal of the Hutchinsons was one that
she would like to spare her foster child, and incidentally herself in
relation to the adjustment of conditions necessary to Eleanor's visit.
Peter wanted her with him, but he believed the new arrangement would
be better for the child. Beulah alone held out for her rights and her
parental privileges. The decision was finally left to Eleanor.
She stood in the center of the group a little forlornly while they
awaited her word. A wave of her old shyness overtook her and she
blushed hot and crimson.
"It's all in your own hands, dear," Beulah said briskly.
"Poor kiddie," Gertrude thought, "it's all wrong somehow."
"I don't know what you want me to say," Eleanor said piteously and
sped to the haven of Peter's breast.
"We'll manage a month together anyway," Peter whispered.
"Then I guess I'll stay here," she whispered back, "because next I
would have to go to Aunt Beulah's."
Peter, turning involuntarily in Beulah's direction, saw the look of
chagrin and disappointment on her face, and realized how much she
minded playing a losing part in the game and yet how well she was
doing it. "She's only a straight-laced kid after all," he thought.
"She's put her whole heart and soul into this thing. There's a look
about the top part of her face when it's softened that's a little like
Ellen's." Ellen was his dead fiancée--the girl in the photograph at
home in his desk.
"I guess I'll stay here," Eleanor said aloud, "all in one place, and
study with Mademoiselle."
It was a decision that, on the whole, she never regretted.