THE HUMAN EQUATION
In an unscientific fashion Mrs. Burton was searching for her purse. She
had peered in the bureau drawers, in her dismantled trunk, and was now
sitting on the edge of her bed trying mentally to discover the lost
object.
Since her arrival at her sister’s home when had she last seen her
pocketbook and for what purpose had she used it?
Ordinarily Mrs. Burton traveled with a maid, who attended to as many
details of life for her as were possible, in order that she might save
her strength for her work. Also because Polly Burton was not much more
dependable about small matters than Polly O’Neill had been. But at
present Marie was away on a holiday, trying to reconcile herself to the
prospect of a year of life in the wilderness, instead of in hotels, or
in Mr. and Mrs. Burton’s New York city apartment, where they lived when
they were acting in New York.
As Polly with her usual impetuosity had decided to follow her letter to
her niece a few hours after the letter was written, there had been no
opportunity to find another maid. Not that one was in the least useful
or desirable in Mollie’s house. Mrs. Burton was not spoiled into the
idea of thinking that she required the services of a maid except when
she was at work.
However, at present she was still in her dressing gown and with her bed
unmade. Mollie always insisted that her sister have her breakfast in bed
during the first of her visit and until she was entirely rested. It was
now nine o’clock. The early search for the pocketbook was really due to
this fact. At any moment the other Polly, whom the family were now
struggling to learn to call Peggy, might appear to offer her aid and to
help make the bed.
This morning visit represented the one opportunity when she and her
adored Tante might have a talk without being interrupted.
And this was why Mrs. Burton had been searching for her money. For here
was her chance for bestowing a gift upon her namesake, and through her
upon Dan and Billy, without family discussion or objection. Always she
looked forward to this moment as one of the chief pleasures of her visit
to her sister.
Not that Mollie and her husband were poor. They were unusually
prosperous, owning one of the best farms in New England. But they did
not have money for unnecessary things. Indeed, no matter what they might
have had, they would never have permitted it to be used extravagantly.
Therefore Peggy—and her adopted name will be used henceforth, since no
one, not even the public, could call her distinguished aunt by any name
save Polly Burton—and her brothers rarely had much money of their own to
spend. Tante, however, was a delightfully extravagant person, who never
had forgotten how poor she used to be herself, and how many impossible
things she had then wished for.
Therefore, a few moments later, when Peggy knocked at her door, an
abstracted voice bade her enter. For the purse had not even been
mentally found. Yet, as far as she could recall, Polly thought she had
put it in her top bureau drawer. There at present, however, it was not.
She lifted her eyes as her niece came in.
“‘Peggy of my Heart,’ look in the bureau drawer and find my pocketbook,”
she began nonchalantly, knowing that it was a wise method to pursue in
persuading another person to find a lost treasure. Better to begin by
not confusing the searcher with the sense of loss.
So Peggy looked for five minutes and, being a matter-of-fact person, she
looked thoroughly.
“It isn’t here,” she announced, with the conviction characteristic of
her.
Her aunt waved a vague hand.
“Be sure to look everywhere, dear.”
And Peggy conscientiously looked, Mrs. Polly Burton assisting with less
energy.
But by and by, when both of them were exhausted from the most fatiguing
occupation in the world—searching for and not finding a desired
object—they sat down on opposite sides of the bed, facing each other.
“How much money did you have in your purse, Tante?” Peggy demanded,
speaking with the severity each member of her family and her intimate
friends employed in discussing practical matters with the famous but
sometimes erratic lady.
“A hundred dollars,” Polly returned with emphasis. “Only yesterday
afternoon when we came in from tea I counted the money carefully and
then thought I put the purse in the top drawer. Afterwards I was out of
my room until about ten o’clock last night and then your mother and Aunt
Betty and I came up here and talked.”
Peggy frowned.
It amused her aunt to watch her. Peggy had so much the look of her
father—the boy with whom Polly O’Neill had used to have so many
quarrels—in spite of the difference in their coloring. If Peggy was as
obstinate as he had been, it was to be hoped that aunt and niece would
have few differences of opinion.
But Peggy’s attention at present was concentrated on the lost money.
“Mother will be terribly distressed when she hears, for it must have
been one of the servants. And we have had all of them a long time.”
“Oh, for goodness sake, it does not matter so much as all that.” Polly
spoke like an embarrassed girl. “And in any case please don’t tell
mother.”
“She will not only be worried but vexed with me as well. Somehow I must
have been careless, and there is nothing worse, I think, than holding
other people responsible for one’s carelessness. The money will turn up
or else I’ll write Uncle Richard.”
But Peggy was not so easily diverted from an idea or a purpose.
There was a characteristic line from her forehead to the end of her
short, straight nose. Also she had a fashion of lifting her head and
looking fearlessly ahead, as if she were contemplating something in the
outside world, when in reality she was only thinking.
“Billy might help us,” she said suddenly. “He knows all the servants on
the place and they like him better than they do the rest of us.”
And, without waiting for her aunt’s consent, Peggy disappeared.
She was gone a long time—so long that Mrs. Burton grew annoyed. She made
her own bed and made it extremely well, having never forgotten this part
of her Camp Fire education. She also wrote a note to her husband, who
was on a tour in the West. She was just contemplating dressing and
joining the others downstairs when Peggy came back. Billy was with her,
and Billy bore the lost pocketbook.
His expression was odd, but it was Peggy about whom Polly felt suddenly
frightened. Her usually brilliant color was gone, and her lips were in a
hard line.
“Billy took your purse,” and then in a queer voice, “but please make him
explain. I cannot.”
Billy laid the purse gently on his aunt’s knee and looked directly at
her.
It chanced that Polly was sitting in a tall chair so that her eyes were
on a level with the boy’s.
It had always been Polly’s impression that Billy was her favorite of her
sister’s children; perhaps because he was not the favorite with his
mother or father. And then undeniably he was a problem.
“I took your pocketbook, Tante.”
He spoke with a little embarrassment—not a great deal. “I needed some
money at once and knew you would give it to me later. There was no
chance to ask. You were downstairs and when I came up afterwards to tell
you mother and Aunt Betty were in here and I did not wish them to know.”
There was a slight exclamation of consternation and shame from Peggy,
but Mrs. Burton was speechless.
She was not a moralist—that is, it was difficult for her to know how to
preach. But would preaching or anything she could say make Billy
understand the wrong he had done? His mother and father were the most
punctilious people in the world? What must they not have said to him in
times past? He was not a child.
“I am sorry, Billy; it wasn’t square,” Polly said finally, but looking
and feeling more ashamed than the boy himself apparently did.
Billy’s blue eyes were puzzled and regretful, but not
conscience-smitten.
“You intended to persuade father to take me west with you and I would
rather have gone than anything in the world,” he remarked slowly in
reply. “Now you don’t want me to go because you are afraid of the
responsibility I would be, and you don’t trust me.”
He did not put this as a question. He was making a statement.
Nevertheless his aunt answered, “Yes.”
Then, without any further explanation and without even asking to be
forgiven, Billy walked out of the room.
“He is the queerest boy in the world,” Peggy said in distressed tones
when the door closed; “and worries mother and father nearly to death. No
one of us understands him. He does whatever he likes and then accepts
his punishment without a word. He does not like the farm as Dan and I
do, and has never been a hundred miles away. Yet he would rather do a
horrid thing like this and so spoil his chance for going west with you.
Father might have given in.”
Polly arose. “Let’s not talk about it. Run downstairs, dear; I am going
to put on my riding habit. Will you see if the horses will be ready at
eleven? Aunt Betty and I are going to ride over the country together. I
can’t walk very far and it is our best chance for discovering our old
haunts. I knew every inch of this country once as a girl and want to see
our old Sunrise Hill cabin again. Don’t speak of what has happened.”
Then as Peggy started to leave, her aunt thrust the delayed gifts for
herself and Dan into her hand. They were two ten-dollar bills.
Afterwards when Peggy had gone, she nervously counted over her money;
Billy had taken only ten dollars—her usual gift to him. For even this
she was thankful. But for what purpose had the boy needed money in such
a hurry? And why had she discovered him on the night of her arrival
waiting alone at the side of the road when he should have been at home
with his family?
Well, perhaps it was best to have found out Billy’s peculiarities before
taking him away with her. Nevertheless, Mrs. Burton was profoundly
sorry. Certainly the boy needed help of some kind. Yet she would
probably not be equal to the problem of suddenly adopting a large and
nearly grownup family of girls.
“Fools rush in,” Polly smiled and then sighed. “But, after all, I won’t
have an opportunity for worrying over my own health very often.”
Then she went down to the living room.