Turn About Eleanor Part 14

"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 ingenue, 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 a.s.sociated 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 mola.s.ses 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 fiancee--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.

CHAPTER XIII

BROOK AND RIVER

"Standing with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet."

"I think it's a good plan to put a quotation like Kipling at the top of the page whenever I write anything in this diary," Eleanor began in the smart leather bound book with her initials stamped in black on the red cover--the new private diary that had been Peter's gift to her on the occasion of her fifteenth birthday some months before. "I think it is a very expressive thing to do. The quotation above is one that expresses me, and I think it is beautiful too. Miss Hadley--that's my English teacher--the girls call her Haddock because she does look rather like a fish--says that it's undoubtedly one of the most poignant descriptions of adolescent womanhood ever made. I made a note to look up adolescent, but didn't. Bertha Stephens has my dictionary, and won't bring it back because the leaves are all stuck together with fudge, and she thinks she ought to buy me a new one. It is very honorable of her to feel that way, but she never will. Good old Stevie, she's a great borrower.

"'Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.'

"Shakespeare.

"Well, I hardly know where to begin. I thought I would make a resume of some of the events of the last year. I was only fourteen then, but still I did a great many things that might be of interest to me in my declining years when I look back into the annals of this book. To begin with I was only a freshie at Harmon. It is very different to be a soph.o.m.ore. I can hardly believe that I was once a shivering looking little thing like all the freshmen that came in this year. I was very frightened, but did not think I showed it.

"'Oh! wad some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselves as others see us.'

"Robert Burns had twins and a rather bad character, but after he met his bonnie Jean he wrote very beautiful poetry. A poet's life is usually sad anyhow--full of disappointment and pain--but I digress.

"I had two years with Mademoiselle at the Bollings' instead of one the way we planned. I haven't written in my Private Diary since the night of that momentous decision that I was to stay in one place instead of taking turns visiting my cooperative parents. I went to another school one year before I came to Harmon, and that brings me to the threshold of my fourteenth year. If I try to go back any farther, I'll never catch up. I spent that vacation with Aunt Margaret in a cottage on Long Island with her sister, and her sister's boy, who has grown up to be the silly kind that wants to kiss you and pull your hair, and those things. Aunt Margaret is so lovely I can't think of words to express it. 'Oh! rare pale Margaret,' as Tennyson says. She wears her hair in a coronet braid around the top of her head, and all her clothes are the color of violets or a soft dovey gray or white, though baby blue looks nice on her especially when she wears a fishyou.

"I went down to Cape Cod for a week before I came to Harmon, and while I was there my grandmother died. I can't write about that in this diary. I loved my grandmother and my grandmother loved me. Uncle Peter came, and took charge of everything. He has great strength that holds you up in trouble.

"The first day I came to Harmon I saw the girl I wanted for my best friend, and so we roomed together, and have done so ever since. Her name is Margaret Louise Hodges, but she is called Maggie Lou by every one. She has dark curly hair, and deep brown eyes, and a very silvery voice. I have found out that she lies some, but she says it is because she had such an unhappy childhood, and has promised to overcome it for my sake.

"That Christmas vacation the 'We Are Sevens' went up the Hudson to the Bollings' again, but that was the last time they ever went there.

Uncle David and his mother had a terrible fight over them. I was sorry for Madam Bolling in a way. There was a girl she wanted Uncle David to marry, a rich girl who looked something like Cleopatra, very dark complexioned with burning eyes. She had a sweet little Pekinese something like Zaidee.

"Uncle David said that gold could never buy him, and to take her away, but Madam Bolling was very angry, of course. She accused him of wanting to marry Aunt Margaret, and called her a characterless, faded blonde. Then it was Uncle David's turn to get angry, and I have never seen any one get any angrier, and he told about the vow of celibacy, and how instead of having designs on him the whole crowd would back him up in his struggle to stay single. It was an awful row. I told Madam Bolling that I would help her to get Uncle David back, and I did, but she never forgave the other aunts and uncles. I suppose the feelings of a mother would prompt her to want Uncle David settled down with a rich and fashionable girl who would soon be the mother of a lot of lovely children. I can't imagine a Cleopatra looking baby, but she might have boys that looked like Uncle David.

"Vacations are really about all there is to school. Freshman year is mostly grinding and stuffing. Having six parents to send you boxes of 'grub' is better than having only two. Some of the girls are rather selfish about the eats, and come in and help themselves boldly when you are out of the room. Maggie Lou puts up signs over the candy box: 'Closed for Repairs,' or 'No Trespa.s.sing by Order of the Board of Health,' but they don't pay much attention. Well, last summer vacation I spent with Uncle Jimmie. I wouldn't tell this, but I reformed him. I made him sign the pledge. I don't know what pledge it was because I didn't read it, but he said he was addicted to something worse than anything I could think of, and if somebody didn't pull him up, he wouldn't answer for the consequences. I asked him why he didn't choose Aunt Gertrude to do it, and he groaned only. So I said to write out a pledge, and sign it and I would be the witness. We were at a hotel with his brother's family. It isn't proper any more for me to go around with my uncles unless I have a chaperon. Mademoiselle says that I oughtn't even to go down-town alone with them but, of course, that is French etiquette, and not American. Well, there were lots of pretty girls at this hotel, all wearing white and pink dresses, and carrying big bell shaped parasols of bright colors. They looked sweet, like so many flowers, but Uncle Jimmie just about hated the sight of them. He said they were not girls at all, but just pink and white devices of the devil. On the whole he didn't act much like my merry uncle, but we had good times together playing tennis and golf, and going on parties with his brother's family, all mere children but the mother and father. Uncle Jimmie was afraid to go and get his mail all summer, although he had a great many letters on blue and lavender note paper scented with Roger et Gallet's violet, and Hudnut's carnation. We used to go down to the beach and make bonfires and burn them unread, and then toast marshmallows in their ashes. He said that they were communications from the spirits of the dead. I should have thought that they were from different girls, but he seemed to hate the sight of girls so much. Once I asked him if he had ever had an unhappy love-affair, just to see what he would say, but he replied 'no, they had all been happy ones,' and groaned and groaned.

"Aunt Beulah has changed too. She has become a suffragette and thinks only of getting women their rights and their privileges.

"Maggie Lou is an anti, and we have long arguments about the cause.

She says that woman's place is in the home, but I say look at me, who have no home, how can I wash and bake and brew like the women of my grandfather's day, visiting around the way I do? And she says that it is the principle of the thing that is involved, and I ought to take a stand for or against. Everybody has so many different arguments that I don't know what I think yet, but some day I shall make up my mind for good.

"Well, that about brings me up to the present. I meant to describe a few things in detail, but I guess I will not begin on the past in that way. I don't get so awfully much time to write in this diary because of the many interruptions of school life, and the way the monitors snoop in study hours. I don't know who I am going to spend my Christmas holidays with. I sent Uncle Peter a poem three days ago, but he has not answered it yet. I'm afraid he thought it was very silly. I don't hardly know what it means myself. It goes as follows:

"A Song

"The moon is very pale to-night, The summer wind swings high, I seek the temple of delight, And feel my love draw nigh.

"I seem to feel his fragrant breath Upon my glowing cheek.