CHAPTER XVI

MARGARET LOUISA'S BIRTHRIGHT

"I am sixteen years and eight months old to-day," Eleanor wrote, "and I have had the kind of experience that makes me feel as if I never wanted to be any older. I know life is full of disillusionment and pain, but I did not know that any one with whom you have broken bread, and slept in the same room with, and told everything to for four long years, could turn out to be an absolute traitor and villainess. Let me begin at the beginning. For nearly a year now I have noticed that Bertha Stephens avoided me, and presented the appearance of disliking me. I don't like to have any one dislike me, and I have tried to do little things for her that would win back her affection, but with no success. As I was editing the Lantern I could print her essayettes (as she called them) and do her lots of little favors in a literary way, which she seemed to appreciate, but personally she avoided me like the plague.

"Of course Stevie has lots of faults, and since Margaret Louise and I always talked everything over we used to talk about Stevie in the same way. I remember that she used to try to draw me out about Stevie's character. I've always thought Stevie was a kind of piker, that is that she would say she was going to do a thing, and then from sheer laziness not do it. My dictionary was a case in point. She gummed it all up with her nasty fudge and then wouldn't give it back to me or get me another, but the reason she wouldn't give it back to me was because her feelings were too fine to return a damaged article, and not fine enough to make her hump herself and get me another. That's only one kind of a piker and not the worst kind, but it was _pikerish_.

"All this I told quite frankly to Maggie--I mean Margaret Louise, because I had no secrets from her and never thought there was any reason why I shouldn't. Stevie has a horrid brother, also, who has been up here to dances. All the girls hate him because he is so spoony. He isn't as spoony as Margaret Louise's brother, but he's quite a sloppy little spooner at that. Well, I told Margaret Louise that I didn't like Stevie's brother, and then I made the damaging remark that one reason I didn't like him was because he looked so much like Stevie. I didn't bother to explain to Maggie--I will not call her Maggie Lou any more, because that is a dear little name and sounds so affectionate,--Margaret Louise--what I meant by this, because I thought it was perfectly evident. Stevie is a peachy looking girl, a snow white blonde with pinky cheeks and dimples. Well, her brother is a snow white blond too, and he has pinky cheeks and dimples and his name is Carlo! We, of course, at once named him Curlo. It is not a good idea for a man to look too much like his sister, or to have too many dimples in his chin and cheeks. I had only to think of him in the same room with my three uncles to get his number exactly. I don't mean to use slang in my diary, but I can't seem to help it. Professor Mathews says that slang has a distinct function in the language--in replenishing it, but Uncle Peter says about slang words, that 'many are called, and few are chosen,' and there is no need to try to accommodate them all in one's vocabulary.

"Well, I told Margaret Louise all these things about Curlo, and how he tried to hold my hand coming from the station one day, when the girls all went up to meet the boys that came up for the dance,--and I told her everything else in the world that happened to come into my head.

"Then one day I got thinking about leaving Harmon--this is our senior year, of course--and I thought that I should leave all the girls with things just about right between us, excepting good old Stevie, who had this queer sort of grouch against me. So I decided that I'd just go around and have it out with her, and I did. I went into her room one day when her roommate was out, and demanded a show down. Well, I found out that Maggie--Margaret Louise had just repeated to Stevie every living thing that I ever said about her, just as I said it, only without the explanations and foot-notes that make any kind of conversation more understandable.

"Stevie told me all these things one after another, without stopping, and when she was through I wished that the floor would open and swallow me up, but nothing so comfortable happened. I was obliged to gaze into Stevie's overflowing eyes and own up to the truth as well as I could, and explain it. It was the most humiliating hour that I ever spent, but I told Stevie exactly what I felt about her 'nothing extenuate, and naught set down in malice,' and what I had said about her to our mutual friend, who by the way, is not the mutual friend of either of us any longer. We were both crying by the time I had finished, but we understood each other. There were one or two things that she said she didn't think she would ever forget that I had said about her, but even those she could forgive. She said that my dislike of her had rankled in her heart so long that it took away all the bitterness to know that I wasn't really her enemy. She said that my coming to her that way, and not lying had showed that I had lots of character, and she thought in time that we could be quite intimate friends if I wanted to as much as she did.

"After my talk with Stevie I still hoped against hope that Margaret Louise would turn out to have some reason or excuse for what she had done. I knew she had done it, but when a thing like that happens that upsets your whole trust in a person you simply can not believe the evidence of your own senses. When you read of a situation like that in a book you are all prepared for it by the author, who has taken the trouble to explain the moral weakness or unpleasantness of the character, and given you to understand that you are to expect a betrayal from him or her; but when it happens in real life out of a clear sky you have nothing to go upon that makes you even _believe_ what you know.

"I won't even try to describe the scene that occurred between Margaret Louise and me. She cried and she lied, and she accused me of trying to curry favor with Stevie, and Stevie of being a backbiter, and she argued and argued about all kinds of things but the truth, and when I tried to pin her down to it, she ducked and crawled and sidestepped in a way that was dreadful. I've seen her do something like it before about different things, and I ought to have known then what she was like inside of her soul, but I guess you have to be the object of such a scene before you realize the full force of it.

"All I said was, 'Margaret Louise, if that's all you've got to say about the injury you have done me, then everything is over between us from this minute;' and it was, too.

"I feel as if I had been writing a beautiful story or poem on what I thought was an enduring tablet of marble, and some one had come and wiped it all off as if it were mere scribblings on a slate. I don't know whether it would seem like telling tales to tell Uncle Peter or not; I don't quite know whether I want to tell him. Sometimes I wish I had a mother to tell such things to. It seems to me that a real mother would know what to say that would help you. Disillusion is a very strange thing--like death, only having people die seems more natural somehow. When they die you can remember the happy hours that you spent with them, but when disillusionment comes then you have lost even your beautiful memories.

"We had for the subject of our theme this week, 'What Life Means to Me,' which of course was the object of many facetious remarks from the girls, but I've been thinking that if I sat down seriously to state in just so many words what life means to _me_, I hardly know what I would transcribe. It means disillusionment and death for one thing. Since my grandfather died last year I have had n.o.body left of my own in the world,--no real blood relation. Of course, I am a good deal fonder of my aunts and uncles than most people are of their own flesh and blood, but own flesh and blood is a thing that it makes you feel shivery to be without. If I had been Margaret Louise's own flesh and blood, she would never have acted like that to me. Stevie stuck up for Carlo as if he was really something to be proud of. Perhaps my uncles and aunts feel that way about me, I don't know. I don't even know if I feel that way about them. I certainly criticize them in my soul at times, and feel tired of being dragged around from pillar to post. I don't feel that way about Uncle Peter, but there is n.o.body else that I am certain, positive sure that I love better than life itself. If there is only one in the world that you feel that way about, I might not be Uncle Peter's one.

"Oh! I wish Margaret Louise had not sold her birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish I had a home that I had a perfect right to go and live in forevermore. I wish my mother was here to comfort me to-night."

CHAPTER XVII

A REAL KISS

At seventeen, Eleanor was through at Harmon. She was to have one year of preparatory school and then it was the desire of Beulah's heart that she should go to Rogers. The others contended that the higher education should be optional and not obligatory. The decision was finally to be left to Eleanor herself, after she had considered it in all its bearings.

"If she doesn't decide in favor of college," David said, "and she makes her home with me here, as I hope she will do, of course, I don't see what society we are going to be able to give her. Unfortunately none of our contemporaries have growing daughters. She ought to meet eligible young men and that sort of thing."

"Not yet," Margaret cried. The two were having a cozy cup of tea at his apartment. "You're so terribly worldly, David, that you frighten me sometimes."

"You don't know where I will end, is that the idea?"

"I don't know where Eleanor will end, if you're already thinking of eligible young men for her."

"Those things have got to be thought of," David answered gravely.

"I suppose they have," Margaret sighed. "I don't want her to be married. I want to take her off by myself and growl over her all alone for a while. Then I want Prince Charming to come along and s.n.a.t.c.h her up quickly, and set her behind his milk white charger and ride away with her. If we've all got to get together and connive at marrying her off there won't be any comfort in having her."

"I don't know," David said thoughtfully; "I think that might be fun, too. A vicarious love-affair that you can manipulate is one of the most interesting games in the world."

"That's not my idea of an interesting game," Margaret said. "I like things very personal, David,--you ought to know that by this time."

"I do know that," David said, "but it sometimes occurs to me that except for a few obvious facts of that nature I really know very little about you, Margaret."

"There isn't much to know--except that I'm a woman."

"That's a good deal," David answered slowly; "to a mere man that seems to be considerable of an adventure."

"It is about as much of an adventure sometimes as it would be to be a field of clover in an insectless world.--This is wonderful tea, David, but your cream is like b.u.t.ter and floats around in it in wudges. No, don't get any more, I've got to go home. Grandmother still thinks it's very improper for me to call upon you, in spite of Mademoiselle and your ancient and honorable housekeeper."

"Don't go," David said; "I apologize on my knees for the cream. I'll send out and have it wet down, or whatever you do to cream in that state. I want to talk to you. What did you mean by your last remark?"

"About the cream, or the proprieties?"

"About women."

"Everything and nothing, David dear. I'm a little bit tired of being one, that's all, and I want to go home."

"She wants to go home when she's being so truly delightful and cryptic," David said. "Have you been seeing visions, Margaret, in my hearth fire? Your eyes look as if you had."

"I thought I did for a minute." She rose and stood absently fitting her gloves to her fingers. "I don't know exactly what it was I saw, but it was something that made me uncomfortable. It gives me the creeps to talk about being a woman. David, do you know sometimes I have a kind of queer hunch about Eleanor? I love her, you know, dearly, dearly. I think that she is a very successful kind of Frankenstein; but there are moments when I have the feeling that she's going to be a storm center and bring some queer trouble upon us. I wouldn't say this to anybody but you, David."

As David tucked her in the car--he had arrived at the dignity of owning one now--and watched her sweet silhouette disappear, he, too, had his moment of clairvoyance. He felt that he was letting something very precious slip out of sight, as if some radiant and delicate gift had been laid lightly within his grasp and as lightly withdrawn again.

As if when the door closed on his friend Margaret some stranger, more silent creature who was dear to him had gone with her. As soon as he was dressed for dinner he called Margaret on the telephone to know if she had arrived home safely, and was informed not only that she had, but that she was very wroth at him for getting her down three flights of stairs in the midst of her own dinner toilet.

"I had a kind of hunch, too," he told her, "and I felt as if I wanted to hear your voice speaking."

But she only scoffed at him.

"If that's the way you feel about your chauffeur," she said, "you ought to discharge him, but he brought me home beautifully."

The difference between a man's moments of prescience and a woman's, is that the man puts them out of his consciousness as quickly as he can, while a woman clings to them fearfully and goes her way a little more carefully for the momentary flash of foresight. David tried to see Margaret once or twice during that week but failed to find her in when he called or telephoned, and the special impulse to seek her alone again died naturally.

One Sat.u.r.day a few weeks later Eleanor telegraphed him that she wished to come to New York for the week-end to do some shopping.

He went to the train to meet her, and when the slender chic figure in the most correct of tailor made suits appeared at the gateway, with an obsequious porter bearing her smart bag and ulster, he gave a sudden gasp of surprise at the picture. He had been aware for some time of the increase in her inches and the charm of the pure cameo-cut profile, but he regarded her still as a child histrionically a.s.suming the airs and graces of womanhood, as small girl children masquerade in the trailing skirts of their elders. He was accustomed to the idea that she was growing up rapidly, but the fact that she was already grown had never actually dawned on him until this moment.

"You look as if you were surprised to see me, Uncle David,--are you?"

she said, slipping a slim hand, warm through its immaculate glove, into his. "You knew I was coming, and you came to meet me, and yet you looked as surprised as if you hadn't expected me at all."

"Surprised to see you just about expresses it, Eleanor. I am surprised to see you. I was looking for a little girl in hair ribbons with her skirts to her knees."

"And a blue tam-o'-shanter?"