Leerie Part 8

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Holding him high for Peter to admire]

"Not legally. When the letter comes, you'll see." There was none of the antic.i.p.ated 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, pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.ses--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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 c.o.c.ked 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 d.a.m.ning 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-k.n.o.b. "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.