"I can"t think,--I"m stupefied."
"Uncle Peter couldn"t think, either."
"Have you mentioned this brilliant idea to Peter?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"He talked it over with me, but I think he thinks I"ll change my mind."
"I think you"ll change your mind. Good heavens! Eleanor, we"re all able to afford you--the little we spend on you is nothing divided among six of us. It"s our pleasure and privilege. When did you come to this extraordinary decision?"
"A long time ago. The day that Mrs. Bolling talked to me, I think.
There are things she said that I"ve never forgotten. I told Uncle Peter to think about it and then help me to decide which to do, and I want you to think, Uncle David, and tell me truly what you believe the best preparation for a business life would be. I thought perhaps I might be a stenographer in an editorial office, and my training there would be more use to me than four years at college, but I don"t know."
"You"re an extraordinary young woman," David said, staring at her.
"I"m glad you broached this subject, if only that I might realize how extraordinary, but I don"t think anything will come of it, my dear. I don"t want you to go to college unless you really want to, but if you do want to, I hope you will take up the pursuit of learning as a pursuit and not as a means to an end. Do you hear me, daughter?"
"Yes, Uncle David."
"Then let"s have no more of this nonsense of earning your own living."
"Are you really displeased, Uncle David?"
"I should be if I thought you were serious,--but it"s bedtime. If you"re going to get your beauty sleep, my dear, you ought to begin on it immediately."
Eleanor rose obediently, her brow clouded a little, and her head held high. David watched the color coming and going in the sweet face and the tender breast rising and falling with her quickening breath.
"I thought perhaps you would understand," she said. "Good night."
She had always kissed him "good night" until this visit, and he had refrained from commenting on the omission before, but now he put out his hand to her.
"Haven"t you forgotten something?" he asked. "There is only one way for a daughter to say good night to her parent."
She put up her face, and as she did so he caught the glint of tears in her eyes.
"Why, Eleanor, dear," he said, "did you care?" And he kissed her. Then his lips sought hers again.
With his arms still about her shoulder he stood looking down at her. A hot tide of crimson made its way slowly to her brow and then receded, accentuating the clear pallor of her face.
"That was a real kiss, dear," he said slowly. "We mustn"t get such things confused. I won"t bother you with talking about it to-night, or until you are ready. Until then we"ll pretend that it didn"t happen, but if the thought of it should ever disturb you the least bit, dear, you are to remember that the time is coming when I shall have something to say about it; will you remember?"
"Yes, Uncle David," Eleanor said uncertainly, "but I--I--"
David took her unceremoniously by the shoulders.
"Go now," he said, and she obeyed him without further question.
CHAPTER XVIII
BEULAH"S PROBLEM
Peter was shaving for the evening. His sister was giving a dinner party for two of her husband"s fellow bankers and their wives. After that they were going to see the latest Belasco production, and from there to some one of the new dancing "clubs,"--the smart cabarets that were forced to organize in the guise of private enterprises to evade the two o"clock closing law. Peter enjoyed dancing, but he did not as a usual thing enjoy bankers" wives. He was deliberating on the possibility of excusing himself gracefully after the theater, on the plea of having some work to do, and finally decided that his sister"s feelings would be hurt if she realized he was trying to escape the climax of the hospitality she had provided so carefully.
He gazed at himself intently over the drifts of lather and twisted his shaving mirror to the most propitious angle from time to time. In the room across the hall--Eleanor"s room, he always called it to himself--his young niece was singing bits of the Mascagni intermezzo interspersed with bits of the latest musical comedy, in a rather uncertain contralto.
"My last girl came from Va.s.sar, and I don"t know where to cla.s.s her."
Peter"s mind took up the refrain automatically. "My last girl--" and began at the beginning of the chorus again. "My last girl came from Va.s.sar," which brought him by natural stages to the consideration of the higher education and of Beulah, and a conversation concerning her that he had had with Jimmie and David the night before.
"She"s off her nut," Jimmie said succinctly. "It"s not exactly that there"s n.o.body home," he rapped his curly pate significantly, "but there"s too much of a crowd there. She"s not the same old girl at all.
She used to be a good fellow, high-brow propaganda and all. Now she"s got nothing else in her head. What"s happened to her?"
"It"s what hasn"t happened to her that"s addled her," David explained.
"It"s these highly charged, hypersensitive young women that go to pieces under the modern pressure. They"re the ones that need licking into shape by all the natural processes."
"By which you mean a drunken husband and a howling family?" Jimmie suggested.
"Yes, or its polite equivalent."
"That is true, isn"t it?" Peter said. "Feminism isn"t the answer to Beulah"s problem."
"It is the problem," David said; "she"s poisoning herself with it. I know what I"m talking about. I"ve seen it happen. My cousin Jack married a girl with a sister a great deal like Beulah, looks, temperament, and everything else, though she wasn"t half so nice. She got going the militant pace and couldn"t stop herself. I never met her at a dinner party that she wasn"t tackling somebody on the subject of man"s inhumanity to woman. She ended in a sanitorium; in fact, they"re thinking now of taking her to the--"
"--bug house," Jimmie finished cheerfully.
"And in the beginning she was a perfectly good girl that needed nothing in the world but a chance to develop along legitimate lines."
"The frustrate matron, eh?" Peter said.
"The frustrate matron," David agreed gravely. "I wonder you haven"t realized this yourself, Gram. You"re keener about such things than I am. Beulah is more your job than mine."
"Is she?"
"You"re the only one she listens to or looks up to. Go up and tackle her some day and see what you can do. She"s sinking fast."
"Give her the once over and throw out the lifeline," Jimmie said.
"I thought all this stuff was a phase, a part of her taking herself seriously as she always has. I had no idea it was anything to worry about," Peter persisted. "Are you sure she"s in bad shape--that she"s got anything more than a bad attack of Feminism of the Species in its most virulent form? They come out of _that_, you know."
"She"s batty," Jimmie nodded gravely. "Dave"s got the right dope."
"Go up and look her over," David persisted; "you"ll see what we mean, then. Beulah"s in a bad way."