Occasionally the architect of an apartment on the upper west side of New York--by pure accident, it would seem, since the general run of such apartments is so uncomfortable, and unfriendly--hits upon a plan for a group of rooms that are at once graciously proportioned and charmingly convenient, while not being an absolute offense to the eye in respect to the details of their decoration. Beulah Page and her mother lived in such an apartment, and they had managed with a few ancestral household G.o.ds, and a good many carefully related modern additions to them, to make of their eight rooms and bath, to say nothing of the ubiquitous butler"s-pantry, something very remarkably resembling a home, in its most delightful connotation: and it was in the drawing room of this home that the three girls were gathered.
Beulah, the younger daughter of a widowed mother--now visiting in the home of the elder daughter, Beulah"s sister Agatha, in the expectation of what the Victorians refer to as an "interesting event"--was technically under the chaperonage of her Aunt Ann, a solemn little spinster with no control whatever over the movements of her determined young niece.
Beulah was just out of college,--just out, in fact, of the most high-minded of all the colleges for women;--that founded by Andrew Rogers in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-one. There is probably a greater percentage of purposeful young women graduated from Rogers College every year, than from any other one of the communities of learning devoted to the education of women; and of all the purposeful cla.s.ses turned out from that admirable inst.i.tution, Beulah"s cla.s.s could without exaggeration be designated as the most purposeful cla.s.s of them all. That Beulah was not the most purposeful member of her cla.s.s merely argues that an almost abnormally high standard of purposefulness was maintained by practically every individual in it.
At Rogers every graduating cla.s.s has its fad; its propaganda for a crusade against the most startling evils of the world. One year, the sacred outlines of the human figure are protected against disfigurement by an ardent group of young cla.s.sicists in Grecian draperies. The next, a fierce young brood of vegetarians challenge a lethargic world to mortal combat over an Argentine sirloin. The year of Beulah"s graduation, the new theories of child culture that were gaining serious headway in academic circles, had filtered into the cla.s.s rooms, and Beulah"s mates had contracted the contagion instantly. The entire senior cla.s.s went mad on the subject of child psychology and the various scientific prescriptions for the direction of the young idea.
It was therefore primarily to Beulah Page, that little Eleanor Hamlin, of Colha.s.sett, Ma.s.sachusetts, owed the change in her fortune. At least it was to Beulah that she owed the initial inspiration that set the wheel of that fortune in motion; but it was to the glorious enterprise and idealism of youth, and the courage of a set of the most intrepid and quixotic convictions that ever quickened in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a mad half dozen youngsters, that she owed the actual fulfillment of her adventure.
The sound of the door-bell brought the three girls to their feet, but the footfalls in the corridor, double quick time, and accentuated, announced merely the arrival of Jimmie Sears, and Peter Stuyvesant, nicknamed _Gramercy_ by common consent.
"Has she come?" Peter asked.
But Jimmie struck an att.i.tude in the middle of the floor.
"My daughter, oh! my daughter," he cried. "This suspense is killing me. For the love of Mike, children, where is she?"
"She"s coming," Beulah answered; "David"s bringing her."
Gertrude pushed him into the _chaise-lounge_ already in the possession of Margaret, and squeezed in between them.
"Hold my hand, Jimmie," she said. "The feelings of a father are nothing,--_nothing_ in comparison to those which smolder in the maternal breast. Look at Beulah, how white she is, and Margaret is trembling this minute."
"I"m trembling, too," Peter said, "or if I"m not trembling, I"m frightened."
"We"re all frightened," Margaret said, "but we"re game."
The door-bell rang again.
"There they come," Beulah said, "oh! everybody be good to me."
The familiar figure of their good friend David appeared on the threshold at this instant, and beside him an odd-looking little figure in a shoddy cloth coat, and a faded blue tam-o"-shanter. There was a long smudge of dirt reaching from the corner of her eye well down into the middle of her cheek. A kind of composite gasp went up from the waiting group, a gasp of surprise, consternation, and panic. Not one of the five could have told at that instant what it was he expected to see, or how his imagination of the child differed from the concrete reality, but amazement and keen disappointment constrained them. Here was no figure of romance and delight. No miniature Galatea half hewn out of the block of humanity, waiting for the chisel of a composite Pygmalion. Here was only a grubby, little unkempt child, like all other children, but not so presentable.
"What"s the matter with everybody?" said David with unnatural sharpness. "I want to present you to our ward, Miss Eleanor Hamlin, who has come a long way for the pleasure of meeting you. Eleanor, these are your cooperative parents."
The child"s set gaze followed his gesture obediently. David took the little hand in his, and led the owner into the heart of the group.
Beulah stepped forward.
"This is your Aunt Beulah, Eleanor, of whom I"ve been telling you."
"I"m pleased to make your acquaintance, Aunt Beulah," the little girl said, as Beulah put out her hand, still uncertainly.
Then the five saw a strange thing happen. The immaculate, inscrutable David--the aristocrat of aristocrats, the one undemonstrative, super-self-conscious member of the crowd, who had been delegated to transport the little orphan chiefly because the errand was so incongruous a mission on which to despatch him--David put his arm around the neck of the child with a quick protecting gesture, and then gathered her close in his arms, where she clung, quivering and sobbing, the unkempt curls straggling helplessly over his shoulder.
He strode across the room where Margaret was still sitting upright in the _chaise-lounge_, her dove-gray eyes wide, her lips parted.
"Here, you take her," he said, without ceremony, and slipped his burden into her arms.
"Welcome to our city, Kiddo," Jimmie said in his throat, but n.o.body heard him.
Peter, whose habit it was to walk up and down endlessly wherever he felt most at home, paused in his peregrination, as Margaret shyly gathered the rough little head to her bosom. The child met his gaze as he did so.
"We weren"t quite up to scratch," he said gravely.
Beulah"s eyes filled. "Peter," she said, "Peter, I didn"t mean to be--not to be--"
But Peter seemed not to know she was speaking. The child"s eyes still held him, and he stood gazing down at her, his handsome head thrown slightly back; his face deeply intent; his eyes softened.
"I"m your Uncle Peter, Eleanor," he said, and bent down till his lips touched her forehead.
CHAPTER III
THE EXPERIMENT BEGINS
Eleanor walked over to the steam pipes, and examined them carefully.
The terrible rattling noise had stopped, as had also the choking and gurgling that had kept her awake because it was so like the noise that Mrs. O"Farrel"s aunt, the sick lady she had helped to take care of, made constantly for the last two weeks of her life. Whenever there was a sound that was anything like that, Eleanor could not help shivering.
She had never seen steam pipes before. When Beulah had shown her the room where she was to sleep--a room all in blue, baby blue, and pink roses--Eleanor thought that the silver pipes standing upright in the corner were a part of some musical instrument, like a pipe organ. When the rattling sound had begun she thought that some one had come into the room with her, and was tuning it. She had drawn the pink silk puff closely about her ears, and tried not to be frightened. Trying not to be frightened was the way she had spent a good deal of her time since her Uncle Amos died, and she had had to look out for her grandparents.
Now that it was morning, and the bright sun was streaming into the windows, she ventured to climb out of bed and approach the uncanny instrument. She tripped on the trailing folds of that nightgown her Aunt Beulah--it was funny that all these ladies should call themselves her aunts, when they were really no relation to her--had insisted on her wearing. Her own nightdress had been left in the time-worn carpetbag that Uncle David had forgotten to take out of the "handsome cab." She stumbled against the silver pipes. They were _hot_; so hot that the flesh of her arm nearly blistered, but she did not cry out.
Here was another mysterious problem of the kind that New York presented at every turn, to be silently accepted, and dealt with.
Her mother and father had once lived in New York. Her father had been born here, in a house with a brownstone front on West Tenth Street, wherever that was. She herself had lived in New York when she was a baby, though she had been born in her grandfather"s house in Colha.s.sett. She had lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, too, until she was four years old, and her father and mother had died there, both in the same week, of pneumonia. She wished this morning, that she could remember the house where they lived in New York, and the things that were in it.
There was a knock on the door. Ought she to go and open the door in her nightdress? Ought she to call out "Come in?" It might be a gentleman, and her Aunt Beulah"s nightdress was not very thick. She decided to cough, so that whoever was outside might understand she was in there, and had heard them.
"May I come in, Eleanor?" Beulah"s voice called.
"Yes, ma"am." She started to get into bed, but Miss--Miss--the nearer she was to her, the harder it was to call her aunt,--Aunt Beulah might think it was time she was up. She compromised by sitting down in a chair.
Beulah had pa.s.sed a practically sleepless night working out the theory of Eleanor"s development. The six had agreed on a certain sketchily defined method of procedure. That is, they were to read certain books indicated by Beulah, and to follow the general schedule that she was to work out and adapt to the individual needs of the child herself, during the first phase of the experiment. She felt that she had managed the reception badly, that she had not done or said the right thing. Peter"s att.i.tude had shown that he felt the situation had been clumsily handled, and it was she who was responsible for it. Peter was too kind to criticize her, but she had vowed in the m.u.f.fled depths of a feverish pillow that there should be no more flagrant flaws in the conduct of the campaign.
"Did you sleep well, Eleanor?" she asked.
"Yes, ma"am."
"Are you hungry?"
"No, ma"am."
The conversation languished at this.
"Have you had your bath?"
"I didn"t know I was to have one."