THE CHANGELING
He arrived in the arms of his mother, the mulatto nurse having in some
inexplicable and inconsiderate fashion acquired measles on the ship coming
from their small South American republic. Francisco Enrique Manuel Machado
y Rodriguez--Pancho, for short--and his mother were allowed to disembark
only because of his appalling lack of health and her promise to take
harborage in a hospital instead of a hotel.
Having heard of the sanitarium from her sister-in-law's brother's wife's
aunt, who had been there herself, and having traveled already over a
thousand miles, the additional hundred or so seemed too trivial to bother
about. So the senora kept her promise to the officials by buying her
ticket thitherward, and Flanders, the bus-driver, arrived just in time to
see three porters unload them and their luggage on the small station
platform. The senora was weeping bitterly, the powder spattered and
smeared all over her pretty, shallow little face; Pancho was clawing and
scratching the air, while he shrieked at the top of his lungs--the only
part of him that gave any evidence of strength.
Having disposed of the luggage, Flanders hurried back to the assistance of
the senora, whereupon the brown atom clawed him instead of the air and
fortissimoed his shrieking. Flanders promptly returned him to his mother,
backing away to the bus and muttering something about "letting wildcat's
cubs be."
"Wil'cat?" repeated the senora through her sobs. "I don't know what ees
wil'cat. I theenk eet ees one leetle deevil. Tsa, Panchito! Ciera la
boca." And she shook him.
During the drive to the sanitarium Flanders cast periodic glances within.
Each time he looked the atom appeared to be shrieking louder, while his
mother was shaking harder and longer. By the time they had reached their
destination the breath had been shaken quite out of him. He lay back
panting in his mother's arms, with only strength enough for a feeble and
occasional snarl. His bonnet of lace and cerise-pink ribbon had come
untied and had slipped from his head, disclosing a mass of black hair
curled by nature and matted by neglect. It gave the last uncanny touch to
the brown atom's appearance and caused Hennessy, who was sweeping the
crossing, to drop his broom and stare agape at the new arrivals.
"Faith, is it one o' them Brazilian monkeys?" he whispered, pulling
Flanders by the sleeve. "I've heard the women are makin' pets o' them,
although I never heard they were after fixin' them up wi' lace an' ribbons
like that."
"It's a kid." Flanders stated the fact without any degree of positiveness
as he rubbed three fingers cautiously down his cheek. He was feeling for
scars. "Guess it's a kid all right, but it scratches like a cat, gosh durn
it!"
Hennessy, however, shook a positive head. "That's no kid. Can't ye see for
yourself it's noways human? Accordin' to the Sunday papers it's all the
style for blond dancers an' society belles to be fetchin' one o' them
little apes about. They're thinkin' if they hang a bit o' live ugliness
furninst, their beauty will look all the more ravishin'."
"Live ugliness," repeated Flanders; then he laughed. "You've struck it,
Hennessy."
Meanwhile Francisco Enrique Manuel Machado y Rodriguez--Pancho, for
short--and his mother had passed into the hands of the sanitarium porter.
He had handed them on to the business office, which in turn had handed
them over to the superintendent. The superintendent had shared the
pleasure with the house staff, the staff had retired in favor of the baby
specialist, and at half past seven o'clock that night neither he nor the
superintendent of nurses had been able to coax, argue, command, or
threaten a nurse into taking the case.
"I'm afraid you will have to do with an undergraduate and make the best of
it." Miss Maxwell acknowledged her helplessness with a faint smile.
But Doctor Fuller shook his head. "Won't do. It means skilled care and
watching for days. A nurse without experience would be about as much good
as an incubator. Think if you dismissed the four who've refused, you could
frighten a fifth into taking it?"
This time the superintendent of nurses shook her head. "Not this case.
They all feel about it the same way. Miss Jacobs tells me she didn't take
her training to nurse monkeys."
The old doctor chuckled. "Don't know as I blame her; thought it was a new
species myself when I first clapped eyes on it. But shucks! I've seen some
of our North American babies look like Lincoln Imps when they were down
with marasmus. Give me a few weeks and a good nurse and his own mother
wouldn't recognize--" He interrupted himself with a pounding fist on the
desk. "Where's Leerie?"
"You can't have her--not this time." Miss Maxwell's lips became a fraction
more firm, while her eyes sharpened into what her training girls had come
to call her "forceps expression."
"Why not?"
"The girl's just off that case for Doctor Fritz; she's tired out. Remember
she's been through three unbroken years of hospitals, and we've worked her
on every hard case we've had since she came back. I'm going to see that
she gets forty-eight hours of rest now."
"Let her have them next time." Doctor Fuller put all his persuasive charm
into the words. "I need Leerie--some one who can roll up her sleeves and
pitch in. Let me have her just this once."
But Miss Maxwell was obdurate. "She's asleep now, and she's going to sleep
as long as she needs to. I'll give you Miss Grant--she's had a month at
the Maternity at Rochester."
"A month!" Scorn curled up the ends of the doctor's mustache. The next
instant they were almost touching in a broad grin. "Leerie likes cases
like this--just eats them up. I'm going after her." And before the
superintendent of nurses could hold him he was down the corridor on his
way to the nurses' dormitory.
Ten minutes later he was back, grinning harder than ever. He had only time
to thrust his head in the door and wave a triumphant arm. "She's
dressing--as big a fool about babies as I am! Said she'd slept a whole
hour and felt fresh as a daisy. How's that for spunk?"
"I call it nerve." Miss Maxwell smiled a hopeless smile. "What am I going
to do with you doctors? You wear out all my best nurses and you won't
take--" But Doctor Fuller had fled.
In spite of his boast of her, the baby specialist saw Sheila O'Leary
visibly cringe when she took her first look at Pancho. He lay sprawling on
his mother's bed in a room littered with hastily opened bags and trunks
out of which had been pulled clothing of all kinds and hues. He had been
relieved of the lace and pink ribbons and was swathed only in shirt and
roundabout, his arms and legs projected like licorice sticks; being of the
same color and very nearly the same thickness. He was dozing, tired out
with the combination of much travel, screaming, shaking, and loss of
breath. So wasted was he that the skin seemed drawn tight over temple and
cheek-bones; the eyes were pitifully sunken, and colorless lips fell back
over toothless gums.
"How old is--it?" Sheila whispered at last.
"About nine months."
Sheila shuddered. "Just the adorable age. Ought to be all pink cheeks,
dimples, and creases--and look at it!"
"I know, but wait. Give us time and we'll get some of those things
started." Doctor Fuller wagged his head by way of encouragement.
Sheila answered with a deprecatory shake. "This time I don't believe you.
That would be a miracle, and you can do about everything but miracles.
Honestly, it doesn't seem as if I could touch it; looks about a thousand
years old and just human enough to be horrible."
The old doctor eyed her askance. "Not going back on me, are you?"
"Of course I'm not, but there's no use in making believe it will be any
joy-game. I'll be hating it every minute I'm on the case."
"Hate it as much as you like, only stick to it. Hello there, bub!" This to
the brown atom, who was opening his eyes.
The eyes were large and brown and as soft and appealing as a baby seal's.
For a moment they looked with strange, wondering intensity at the two
figures bending over it, then with sudden doubling and undoubling of
fists, a frantic upheaval of brown legs, the atom opened volcanically and
poured forth scream after scream. It writhed, it clawed the air, it
looked every whit as horrible as Sheila had claimed.
"Going to run?" the old doctor asked, anxiously.
For answer Sheila bent down lower and picked up the writhing mass. With a
firm hand she braced it against her shoulder, patting it gently and
swaying her body rhythmically to the patting. "Some eyes and some temper!"
laughed Sheila. "Where's the mother?"
The screaming brought the corridor nurse to the door. "Where's the
mother?" Sheila repeated.
The corridor nurse pointed to the strewn luggage and gave a contemptuous
shrug. "Gone down to dinner looking like a bird of paradise. She said if
the baby cried I was to stir up some of that milk from that can, mix it
with water from that faucet, put it in that bottle, and feed it to him."
Words failed to convey the outraged disgust in her voice.
The milk indicated was condensed milk in a half-emptied can; the bottle
was the regulation kind for babies and as filthy as dirty glass could
look. Sheila and Doctor Fuller exchanged glances.
"Plenty of fight in the little beggar or he wouldn't be outlasting--" The
doctor swallowed the remainder of the sentence, cut short by a startled
look on Sheila's face.
The screams had stopped a minute before, and Sheila believed the atom had
dropped asleep. But instead of feeling the tiny body relax as a sleeping
baby's will, it was growing slowly rigid. With this realization she strode
to the bed and put the atom down. Before their eyes the body stiffened,
while the head rolled slowly from side to side and under the half-closed
lids the eyeballs rolled with it.
"Convulsions!" announced the corridor nurse, with an anxious look toward
the door. Then, as a bell tinkled, she voiced her relief in a quick
breath. "That's sixty-one. I'm hiking--"
"No, you don't!" The doctor jerked her back; he wanted to shake her.
"You'll hustle some hot water for us, and then you'll stand by to hustle
some more. See?" He was shedding all unnecessary clothing as he spoke, and
Sheila was peeling the atom free of shirt and roundabout as fast as
skilled fingers could move.
It is a wonderful thing to watch the fight between human skill and death
for the life of a baby. So little it takes to swing the victory either
way, so close does it border on the miraculous, that few can stand and see
without feeling the silent, invisible presence of the Nazarene. A life
thus saved seems to gather unto itself a special significance and value
for those who have fought for it and those who receive it again. It
creates new feelings and a clearer vision in blind, unthinking motherhood;
it awakens to a vital response hitherto dormant fatherhood. And even the
callous outsider becomes exalted with the wonder and closeness of that
unseen presence.
As the brown atom writhed from one convulsion into another, Sheila and the
old doctor worked with compressed lips and almost suspended breath; they
worked like a single mind supplied with twice the usual amount of
auxiliaries. They saw, without acknowledging it, the gorgeous, tropical
figure that came and stood half-way between the door and the bed; lips
carmined, throat and cheeks heavy with powder, jewels covering ears, neck,
fingers, and wrists, she looked absurdly unreal beside the nurse in her
uniform and the doctor in his shirt-sleeves. Occasionally Sheila glanced
at her. If they won, would the mother care? The question came back to her
consciousness again and again. In her own experience she knew how often
the thing one called motherhood would come into actual existence after a
struggle like this when birth itself had failed to accomplish anything but
a physical obligation. Believing this, Sheila fought the harder.
After an hour the convulsions subsided. A few more drops of brandy were
poured down the tiny throat, and slowly the heart took up its regulation
work. Sheila wrapped the atom in a blanket, put it back on the bed, and
beckoned to the mother.
Curiosity seemed to be the one governing emotion of the senora. She looked
without any trace of grief, and, having looked, she spoke impassively: "I
theenk eet dead. Yes?"
Doctor Fuller, with perspiration pouring from him, transfixed her with a
stare. "No! That baby's going to get well now, and you're going to let
Miss O'Leary teach you how to take proper care of it. Understand?" Then
clapping his fellow-fighter on the back, he beamed down upon her.
"Leerie, you're one grand soldier!"
The monotone of the gorgeous senora broke up any response Sheila might
have given. "I theenk eet die, all the same," came the impassive voice.
"The _padre_ on the ship make it all ready for die--I theenk yes pret'
soon."
"No!" The doctor fairly thundered it forth.
She stooped and pulled away a fold of the blanket with the tips of her
fingers. "Eet look ver' ugly--like eet die. I theenk--all the same."
The doctor caught up his cast-off clothing and flung himself out of the
room. Sheila watched him go, a faint smile pulling at the corners of her
mouth. Strange! He had so evidently reached the end of his self-control,
optimism, and patience, while she was just beginning to find hers. In the
sweep of a second things looked wonderfully clear and hopeful. She thought
she could understand what was in the mind and heart of the senora; what
was more significant, she thought she could understand the reason for it.
And what you can understand you can cope with.
She watched the senora searching in this trunk and that; she saw her jerk
forth a diminutive dress of embroidery and fluted lace; while she thought
the whole thing through to the finish and smiled one of her old
inscrutable smiles.
"Pret' dress," said the senora. "Plent' lace and reebon. You put on for
bury eet--I go find _padre_."
"No," said Sheila, emphatically, "you stay here. I'll go and find the
_padre_."
She left them both in the charge of the corridor nurse and flew for the
telephone. It took her less than a minute to get Father O'Friel; it took
but a trifle more for her to outline her plan and bind him to it. And
Father O'Friel, with a comprehension to match his conscientiousness, and a
sense of humor to match them both, hardly knew whether to be shocked or
amused.
"Why not appeal to the baby's father?"
"Realize it takes a month for a letter to reach that little South American
ant-hill? Write now if you want to, but let me be trying my way while the
letter is traveling."
"All right. But if it doesn't work--"
"It will. When my feelings about anything run all to the good this way,
I'd bank anything on them. Now please hurry."
So it came about that instead of a burial service that night Father
O'Friel conducted an original and unprecedented adoption ceremony. Without
even a witness the senora signed a paper which she showed no inclination
to read and which she would hardly have understood had she attempted it.
It was enough for her that she could give away Francisco Enrique Manuel
Machado y Rodriguez to a foolish nurse who was plainly anxious to be
bothered with him. Death had seemed the only release from an obligation
that exhausted and frightened her, and from which neither pleasure nor
personal pride could be obtained. But this was another way mercifully held
out to her, and she accepted it with gratitude and absolute belief.
Eagerly she agreed to the conditions Sheila laid down; the father was to
be notified and forced to make a life settlement on the atom; in the mean
time she was to remain at the sanitarium, pay all expenses, and interfere
in no way with the nurse or the baby. So desirous was she to display her
gratitude that she heaped the atom's wardrobe--lace, ribbons, and
embroidery--upon Sheila, and kissed the hem of Father O'Friel's cassock.
"_Que gracioso--que magnifico!_" Then she yawned behind her tinted nails.
"I have ver' much the sleep. I find anothaire room and make what you
call--_la cama_." At the door she turned and cast a farewell look upon the
blanketed bundle. "Eet look ver' ugly--all the same I theenk eet die."
It took barely ten minutes for word of the adoption to reach Doctor
Fuller, and it brought him running. "Good Lord! Leerie, are you crazy? Did
you think I pulled you out of bed to-night to start an orphan-asylum? What
do you mean, girl?"
Sheila looked down at her newly acquired possession, and for the first
time that night the strange, luminous look that was all her own, that had
won for her her nickname of Leerie, crept into her eyes; they fairly
dazzled the old doctor with their shining. "Honestly, don't know myself.
Still testing out my feelings in my think laboratory."
"You can't raise that baby and keep on with your nursing. Too much
responsibility, anyway, for a young person. What's more, the mother
shouldn't be allowed to dodge it. She can be made fit."
"How are you going to do it? Train her with harness and braces? Or moral
suasion--or the courts?"
"And I thought you hated it, couldn't bear to touch it," growled the baby
specialist.
"Did. But that's past tense. Since I fought for it, it's suddenly become
remarkably precious. And that's the precise feeling I'm testing up in the
lab."
"In the name of common sense what do you mean, Leerie?"
She patted his arm soothingly. "There, there. Go to bed; you're tuckered
out. Leave me alone for two months, and I'll tell you. And suppose you
write down that milk formula before you go; he's going to wake up as
fighting hungry as a little tiger-cat."
How the sanitarium took the news of the arrivals and the rumor of the
adoption, what they thought of the gorgeous and irresponsible senora and
Leerie's latest exploit, does not concern the story. It is enough to say
that tongues wagged abundantly; and when Sheila appeared some ten days
later in the pine grove wheeling a perambulator every one who was out and
could manufacture the flimsiest excuse for her curiosity hurried to the
carriage and thrust an inquisitive head under the hood. It seemed as if
hundreds blocked the walk from the pond to the rest-house.
"Bad as a circus parade," thought Sheila. "Can't stay here, or they'll put
us in a tent and ask admission." Then she spied Hennessy coming with his
platter of bread for the swans, and called to him. Somehow he managed to
scatter the crowd, and Sheila clung to the sleeve of his blue jumper as if
it had been so much cork to a man overboard. "Listen, Hennessy, I want to
take Pancho away from the San. You and Marm have a cozy place, and it's
far enough away. There's only the two of you. Can't you take us in?"
But Hennessy was likewise thrusting a head under the hood. "Honest to God,
Miss Leerie, is it human?"
"Hennessy, don't be an idiot!"
"But I saw the face on it--an' the scratchin' it did the day it was
fetched in. Does it still be scratchin'?"
"Sometimes." Sheila smiled faintly. "He hasn't had time yet to forget all
those shakings. Well, can we come?"
Hennessy eyed the perambulator fearsomely. "Have to ask Marm. Faith, do ye
think, now, if it had been human, its mother would have given it away same
as if it had been a young cat or dog too many in the litter?"
"Mothers don't have to love their babies; there's no birth license to
sign, you know, with a love-and-cherish clause in it. Just come, wanted or
not, and afterward--"
But Hennessy was deep in speculations of his own. "Now if it was Ireland,
Miss Leerie, do ye know what I would be thinkin'?"
"What?"
He lowered his voice and looked furtively over his shoulder. "A
changeling! Sure as you're born, Miss Leerie, I'm thinkin' it's one o'
them little black imps the fairies leave in place o' the real child
they're after stealin'. I disremember if they have the likes o' that in
South America, but that's my notion, just the same."
Sheila O'Leary laughed inside and out. "Hennessy, you're wonderful. And
who but an Irishman would have thought of it! A changeling--a most
changeable changeling! What's the treatment?"
"A good brewin' of egg-shells--goose egg-shells if ye have 'em, hens' if
ye haven't. But don't ye be laughin'; 'tis a sign o' black doin's, an'
laughin' might bring bad luck on ye."
Sheila sobered. "We'll brew egg-shells. Now hurry home to Marm and coax
her hard, Hennessy."
Because Sheila O'Leary invariably had her way among the many who loved and
believed in her, and because Hennessy and Marm Hennessy were numbered
conspicuously among these, Sheila and her adopted moved early the
following morning into the diminutive and immaculate house of Hennessy,
with a vine-covered porch in front and a hen-yard in the rear. And that
night there was a plentiful brew of egg-shells on the kitchen stove, done
in the most approved Irish fashion, with the atom near by to inhale the
fumes.
"Maybe 'twill work, an' then again maybe 'twon't." Hennessy looked
anxious. "Magic, like anything else, often spoils in transportatin'."
"Oh, it will work!" Sheila spoke with conviction. "And we'll hope the
senora's letter won't travel too fast."
So the names of Sheila O'Leary and Francisco Enrique Manuel Machado y
Rodriguez were crossed off the books of the sanitarium, and the gossips
saw them no more. Only Doctor Fuller and Peter Brooks sought them out in
their new quarters, the doctor to attend professionally, Peter to attend
to the dictates of a persistent heart. Never a day went by that he did not
find his feet trailing the dust on the road to the house of Hennessy, and
Sheila dropped into the habit of watching for him from the vine-covered
porch at a certain time every afternoon. The picture of the best nurse at
the sanitarium sitting in a little old rocker with the brown atom kicking
and crowing on her lap, and looking down the steps with eyes that seemed
to grow daily more luminous, came to be an accepted reality to both Peter
and the doctor--as much of a reality as the reaching out of the atom's
small tendril-like fingers to curl about one's thumb or to cling to one's
watch-charm.
"Loving little cuss," muttered Peter one afternoon. "Can you tell me how
any mother under the sun could resist those eyes or the clutch of those
brown paws?"
"Don't forget one point," Sheila spoke quietly; "he wasn't a loving little
cuss then."
"He'll go down on the books as my pet case," chuckled the doctor. "Four
pounds in four weeks! Think of it, on a whole-milk formula!"
Hennessy wagged his head knowingly at Sheila, and when they had gone he
snorted forth his contempt for professional ignorance. "Milk!
Fiddlesticks! Sure a docthor don't know everything. 'Twas the egg-shells
that done it, an' Marm an' me can bear witness he quit the scratchin' an'
began the smilin' from that very hour. Look at him now! Can ye deny it,
Miss Leerie?"
"I'm not wanting to, Hennessy." Whereupon Sheila proved the matter by
reducing the atom to squeals of joy while she retold the old history of
the pigs with the aid of five little brown toes.
Between Peter and Hennessy, Sheila came into possession of many facts
concerning the senora. Her dresses and her jewels were the talk of the
sanitarium. She applied herself diligently to all beautifying treatments
and the charming of susceptible young men. Presumably life to her meant
only a continuous process of adorning herself and receiving admiration. So
she spent her days dressing and basking in the company of a dozen
different swains, and the atom cast no annoying shadow on her pathway.
August came, and the atom discovered his legs. Sheila disregarded the lace
and ribbons with a sigh of relief and took to making rompers. They were
adorable rompers with smocking and the palest of pink collars and belts.
The licorice sticks had changed to a rich olive brown and had assumed
sufficient rotundity to allow of pink-and-white socks and white
ankle-ties. In all the busy years of her nursing Sheila had never had time
for anything like this; she had never had a baby for longer than a week or
two at a time. Just as she was beginning to feel her individual share in
them they had all gone the way of properly parented offspring, and never
had she sewed a single baby dress. She gloried in the lengths of dimity
and poplin, in the intricacies of new stitches and embroidery. And Peter,
watching from a step on the porch, gloried in the picture she made.
When a romper was finished it had to be tried on that very minute. She
would whisk up the atom from the hammock where he lay kicking, and slip
him into it, holding him high for Peter to admire.
"He's a cherub done in bronze," said Peter, one day. "Here, give him to
me." And later, as he perched him on his shoulder and tickled his ribs
until he squirmed with glee he announced, "If I wasn't a homeless bachelor
I'd take him off your hands in about two minutes."
"What's that?" shouted Doctor Fuller, coming down the street. "Did you say
anything about re-adoption? Well, you might as well know now that Mrs.
Fuller and I intend taking Pancho off Leerie's hands as soon as she's
ready to go back to work again. Aren't you getting lazy, Leerie?"
For once Sheila failed to respond in kind to the doctor's chaffing. All
the shine faded out of her eyes. "Can't believe two months have gone--a
month for a letter to go, a month for an answer to come. I'm afraid none
of us will keep him very much longer."
"Don't worry, they won't want him back. Besides, they've forfeited
their right to him," the old doctor snorted, indignantly.
[Illustration: Holding him high for Peter to admire]
"Not legally. When the letter comes, you'll see." There was none of the
anticipated delight in Sheila's voice that had been there on that first
night when she had laid her plans and sworn Father O'Friel into backing
her up. Her voice was as colorless as her eyes were dull; for some
miraculous reason the life and inner light that seemed such an inseparable
part of her had suddenly gone out. She reached up and removed the atom
from Peter's shoulder.
Hennessy, who had joined the group, was the last to speak. "Sure it's
mortial good of both ye gentlemen to lift the throuble o' raisin' the wee
one off Miss Leerie, but if any one lifts it, it's Marm an' me. We had
that settled the next morning after we fetched him over an' knew 'twas the
real one we'd got, after all."
"The real one? What do you mean by that?" The doctor looked puzzled.
Hennessy winked his only answer.
Through the first days of September Sheila waited with feverish anxiety.
The hours spent on the vine-covered porch with the atom, asleep or awake,
for steady company, and Peter for occasional, passed all too quickly. For
the first time in her life Sheila wished days back; she would have put a
checking hand on time had she had the power. Then just as she was making
up her mind that her fear was for nothing, that her plans had gloriously
failed and Pancho was to be hers for all time, the wretched news came.
Peter brought it, hurrying hatless down the street, and Sheila, knowing in
her heart what had happened, went down the steps to meet him.
"Is it a letter--or a wire--or what? And where's the senora?"
"Having hysterics in front of the business office." Peter stopped to get
his breath. "The husband wired from New York--he'll be down on the morning
train. It seems the senora wired him when she first got here that Pancho
was dying, so she didn't see any need of changing it in her letter. She
said she wanted the money for a monument and masses--and he could send it
in a draft. Guess he thought more of the boy than the mother did, for he's
come up to bring the body home and put up the monument down there. Now
she doesn't know what to tell him. Can you beat that for straight
fiction?"
Sheila picked up the atom and disappeared inside without a word. When she
reappeared a few minutes later, the atom was arrayed in his most becoming
romper, his black curls were brushed into an encircling halo, his hands
clapping over some consciousness of pleasurable excitement. Sheila tucked
him into his carriage and faced Peter with a grim look of command. "You're
to play policeman, understand! Walk back of me all the way. If I show any
sign of turning back or running away, arrest me on the spot."
"What are you going to do?"
"What two months ago I thought would be the easiest thing in the
world--and what I wouldn't be doing now for a million dollars if I hadn't
given my word to Father O'Friel and the law wasn't against me."
As Peter had rightfully reported, the senora was having hysterics in front
of the business office, with the business and hospital staff trying their
best to quench her, and as many patients as the lobby would hold watching
in varying degrees of curiosity. Only one of Latin blood could have
achieved a scene of such melodramatic abandon and stamped it as genuine,
but no one present doubted the grief and despair of the senora as she
paced the floor wringing her hands and wailing in her native tongue.
Sheila entered by way of the basement and the lift, and she wheeled the
atom's carriage into the inner circle of the crowd, with Peter still in
attendance.
For the moment the interest swerved from the weeping figure to the cooing
occupant of the carriage. The atom was still clapping his hands, and a
pink flush of excitement tinged the olive of the cheeks. "Look at that
cunning baby!"... "Isn't he a darling?"... "Why, isn't that the South
American baby?"... "Sh-h-h--deformed or something."... "Of course, it
can't be." Sentences, whole and in fragments, came to Sheila as she pushed
her way through the crowd.
Something of this new interest must have penetrated the senora's
consciousness, for her wailing ceased; she cocked her head on one side
like a listening parrakeet. "Who say babee? I theenk--I theenk--" Then she
saw Sheila. A look of immediate recognition swept over her face, but it
was gone the instant she looked at the atom. "Who that babee?" she
demanded.
"Mine." Sheila pinned her with steady eyes, while her mouth looked as if
it could never grow gentle and demure again.
Incredulity, suspicion, amazement, were all registered on the pretty,
shallow face. "Your babee? How you get babee?"
Sheila made no answer.
The senora looked again at the atom; she held out a timorous finger to
him. He responded cordially by curling a small fist promptly about it.
"_Madre de Dios, que bonito! Que chico y hermoso!_" Then, to Sheila: "I
give you seeck babee--eet no die? You make thees babee out of seeck babee,
yes?"
Sheila still remained silent.
The senora turned to the atom for the confirmation she desired. "_Nene,
como te llamas?_"
It was intensely entertaining to the atom. He wagged the senora's finger
frantically, tossed back his head, and gave forth a low, gurgling laugh.
"_Jesu!_ That ees hees papa. He look like that when he laugh. _Tu nombre,
nene--tu nombre?_" With a fresh outburst she sank down beside the
carriage and buried her face in the brown legs and pink socks.
But the atom did not approve of this. His lower lip dropped and quivered;
he reached out his arm to Sheila. "Ma-ma-ma-ma," he coaxed.
"You no ma-ma, I ma-ma." The senora was on her feet, shaking an angry fist
at Sheila. But in an instant her anger was gone; she was down on her knees
again, clasping Sheila's skirt, while her voice wailed forth in
supplication. "You no keep leetle babee? You ver' good, ver' kind,
senorita--you _muy simpatica_, yes? You give leetle babee. I ma-ma. Yes?"
But Sheila O'Leary stood grim and unyielding. "No. He is mine. When he was
sick, dying, you didn't want him. You did not like to look at him because
he was ugly; you did not like to hear him cry--so you abused him. Now,
he's all well; he's a pretty baby; he does not cry; he does not scratch. I
never shake him; he loves me very, very much. Now I keep him!" Thus Sheila
delivered her ultimatum.
But the senora still clung. "I no shake babee now. I love babee now.
Please--please--his pa-pa come. You give heem back?"
Sheila unclasped the senora's hands, turned the atom's carriage about, and
deliberately wheeled him away.
Out of the lobby to the sidewalk she was pursued by pleading cries,
expostulating reproofs, as well as actual particles of the crowd itself,
the Reverend Mr. Grumble, the wife of one of the trustees, a handful of
protesting patients, following to urge the rights of the prostrated
mother. But Sheila refused to be held back or argued with; stoically she
kept on her way. When she reached the little vine-covered porch only
Peter, Father O'Friel, and Doctor Fuller remained as escort.
"You can't keep him, Leerie. You've got to give him up." The old doctor
spoke sorrowfully but firmly.
"It was only a mock adoption, and you promised if she ever wanted him back
she should have him," Father O'Friel reminded her.
"She's his mother, after all," Peter put in, lamely.
At that Sheila exploded. "You men make me tired! 'She's his mother, after
all.' After all what? Cruelty, neglect, heartlessness, hoping he would
die--glad to be rid of him! That's about all the sense of justice you
have. Let a woman weep and call for her baby, and every man within earshot
would hand him over without considering for a moment what kind of care she
would give him. Oh, you--make--me--sick!" Sheila buried her face in the
nape of Pancho's neck.
Doctor Fuller, who had always known her, who had stood by her in her
disgrace when she had been sent away from the sanitarium three years
before and had believed in her implicitly in spite of all damning
evidence, who had fought for her a dozen times when she had called down
upon her head the wrath of the business office, looked now upon her
silent, shaking figure with open-mouthed astonishment. In all those years
he had never seen Leerie cry, and he couldn't quite stand it.
"There, there, child! We understand--we're not quite the duffers you make
us out. Of course, by all rights, human and moral, the little shaver
belongs to you, but you can't keep him, just the same."
"Know it! Needn't rub it in! Wasn't going to!" Sheila raised a wet face,
with red-rimmed eyes and lips that trembled outrageously. She couldn't
steady them to save her, and so she let them tremble while she stuttered
forth her last protest. "Didn't think for a moment I wouldn't give him
back, d-d-did you? That was my plan--my way. I wanted Father O'Friel to
let me try--t-t-t-thought all along he'd grow into such an ad-d-d-dorable
mite his m-m-m-mother'd be wanting him back. What I didn't count on was my
wanting to k-k-keep him." Sheila swallowed hard. She wanted to get rid of
that everlasting choke in her throat. When she spoke again her voice was
steadier. "But I tell you one thing. She doesn't get him without fighting
for him. She's going to fight for him as I fought that night in the
sanitarium, and you're going to help me keep her fighting. Understand?
Then perhaps when she gets him she'll have some faint notion of how
precious a baby can be." With a more grim expression than any of the three
had ever seen on her usually luminous face, Sheila O'Leary shouldered the
atom and disappeared within the house.
The three men stood by her while Hennessy guarded the house. For the rest
of the day the senora, backed by the business office and a procession of
interested sympathizers, stormed the parish house and demanded to see the
paper that she had signed. They stormed Doctor Fuller's office and
demanded his co-operation, or at least what information he had to give.
They consulted the one lawyer in the town and three others within car
distance, but their advice availed little, inasmuch as Father O'Friel had
refused to give up the paper until the baby's father arrived, and they
could get no intelligent idea from the senora of how legal the adoption
had been made. By keeping perfectly dumb the three were able to hold the
crowd in abeyance, and the senora, looking anything but a bird of
paradise, came back to them again and again to weep, to plead, to bribe.
The excitement held until midnight, an unprecedented occurrence for the
sanitarium. It was still dark the next morning when Hennessy was roused
from the haircloth sofa in the hall, where he was still keeping guard, by
the fumbling of a hand on the door-knob. "Who's there?" roared Hennessy.
"Please--eet ees me--the Senora Machado y Rodriguez."
"Go 'way! Shoo-oo!" Hennessy banged the door with his fist as he always
banged the bread-platter to scatter the swans.
"I go when I see babee," came the feeble response to his racket.
"Let her in, Hennessy," came the voice of Sheila from up-stairs.
Hennessy unbarred the door, and a shaken, pathetic little figure crept in.
All the coy prettiness was gone for the moment; the swollen eyes had
circles about them, the cheeks were sallow and free of powder as the lips
were free of carmine. The mouth quivered like a grief-stricken child's.
"Please--please--I see babee?" came the wail again.
"Yes. Come up softly," Sheila called from the head of the stairs.
The little figure crept up eagerly. Sheila put out an arm and led her into
a room where a single candle burned beside the bed. There lay the atom,
rosy and dimpling in his sleep.
It is to be doubted if the senora had ever dreamed of such a possession
after the appalling reality of the original Francisco Enrique Manuel
Machado y Rodriguez. In her ignorance and youth she had accepted ugliness,
sickness, and peevish crying as the normal attributes of babyhood, and
because of this she had loathed it. Therefore to be suddenly confronted
with her awful mistake, to find that she had thrown away something that
was beautiful and enchanting, to know she had forfeited what might have
been hers, to feel in a small degree the first longing of motherhood and
be denied it--all this was born into the slowly awakening consciousness of
the senora. It almost transformed her face into homely holiness as she
made her one supreme prayer and sacrifice. "You give me my babee--now--you
give heem and not keep--and I give you all these. See?" She held out her
hands that had been clasped under the heavy mantilla that covered her head
and shoulders. Opening them, she thrust them close, that Sheila might
look. They were filled with jewels--the jewels she adored, that had
contributed a large part to the joy of her existence. Pins, rings,
necklaces, bracelets--the senora had not kept back a single ornament.
"You--you and the blessed Maria will give heem back to me?"
"Get down and pray to the Maria," commanded Sheila. "Promise her that if
she will give your baby back to you you will take care of him for ever and
ever. Never neglect him, never shake nor slap him, never give him bad milk
to make him sick. Promise you'll always love him and keep him laughing and
pretty. And remember--break your promise, let anything happen to Pancho
again, and Maria will not give him back to you another time."
The sanitarium never learned in detail how Senor Machado became reconciled
to a live son, not being present when the news was conveyed to him. They
saw him arrive, however, looking very much shaken with his bereavement,
and they saw him depart with his son perched high upon his shoulder,
wearing the expression of one who has come unexpectedly into a great
possession, while the senora clung to them both. The sanitarium waved them
off with gladness and satisfaction--all but four unsmiling outsiders. So
great a hole can a departing atom sometimes leave behind that those four
who had given him temporary care and guardianship went about for days with
sorrow written plainly upon them. Hennessy fed the swans in bitter
silence; Peter moped, with a laugh for no one; Doctor Fuller groaned
whenever South America was mentioned; while all three knew they could not
even fathom the deepness or the bigness of that hole for Sheila.
Peter took her for a twilight ride in his car the first empty night. "Go
on and cry it out--I sha'n't mind," he urged as he speeded the car along a
country road.
Sheila smiled faintly. "Thank you--can't. Just feel bruised and banged all
over--feel as if I needed a plunge in that old pool of Bethesda."
They spun on in silence for a few miles more before Sheila spoke again. "I
learned one wonderful thing from Pancho--something I never felt sure of
before."
"What was that?"
"Sorry--can't tell. It's the sort of thing you tell only the man you
marry, after you've discovered he's the only man you ever could have
married."
Peter speeded the car ahead and smiled quietly into the gathering
darkness. Fortunately he was not an impatient man.
There is one point concerning the atom that Hennessy and Doctor Fuller
still wrangle over, neither of them having the slightest conception of the
other's point of view.
"That was a case of good nursing and milk," the old doctor persists.
While Hennessy beats the air with his fists and shouts: "Nothing of the
sort! 'Twas egg-shells that done it."