The Road to Understanding
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
Chapter 11: In Quest of the Stars
In a roomy old house on Beacon Hill Dr. Frank Gleason made his home with his sister, Mrs. Ellery Thayer. The family were at their North Shore cottage, however, and only the doctor was at home on the night that Hawkins, the Thayers’ old family butler, appeared at the library door with the somewhat disconcerting information that a young person with a baby and a bag was at the door and wished to speak to Dr. Gleason.
The doctor looked up in surprise.
“Me?” he questioned. “A woman? She must mean Mrs. Thayer.”
“She said you, sir. And she isn’t a patient. I asked her, thinking she might have made a mistake and took you for a real doctor what practices. She said she didn’t want doctoring. She wanted you. She’s a young person I never saw before, sir.”
“But, good Heavens, man, it’s after eleven o’clock!”
“Yes, sir.” On the manservant’s face was an expression of lively curiosity and disapproval, mingled with a subdued but unholy mirth which was not lost on the doctor, and which particularly exasperated him.
“What in thunder can a woman with a baby want of me at this time of— What’s her name?” demanded the doctor.
“She didn’t say, sir.”
“Well, go ask her.”
The butler coughed slightly, but made no move to leave the room.
“I did ask her, sir. She declined to give it.”
“Declined to— Well, I like her impertinence.”
“Yes, sir. She said you’d”—the servant’s voice faltered and swerved ever so slightly from its well-trained impassiveness—”er—understand, sir.”
“She said I’d—the deuce she did!” exploded the doctor under his breath, flushing an angry red and leaping to his feet. “Didn’t you tell her Mrs. Thayer was gone?” he demanded at last, wheeling savagely.
“I did, sir, and—”
“Well?”
“She said she was glad; that she wanted only you, anyway.”
“Wanted only—! Comes here at this time of night with a bag and a baby, refuses to give her name, and says I’ll understand!” snarled the doctor. “Oh, come, Hawkins, this is some colossal mistake, or a fool hoax, or— What kind of looking specimen is she?”
Hawkins, who had known the doctor from his Knickerbocker days, was guilty of a slow grin.
“She’s a—a very good looker, sir.”
“Oh, she is! Well—er, tell her I can’t possibly see her; that I’ve gone to bed—away—sick—something! Anything! Tell her she’ll have to see Mrs. Thayer.”
“Yes, sir.” Still the man made no move to go. “She—er—beg pardon, sir—but she’ll be that cut up, I fear, sir. You see, she’s been cryin’. And she’s young—very young.”
“Crying!”
“Yes, sir. And she was that powerful anxious to see you, sir. I had hard work to keep her from coming with me. I did, sir. She’s in the hall. And—it’s raining outside, sir.”
“Oh, good Heavens! Well, bring her in,” capitulated the doctor in obvious desperation.
“Yes, sir.” This time the words were scarcely out of his mouth before the old man was gone. In an incredibly short time he was back with a flushed-faced, agitated young woman carrying a sleeping child in her arms.
At sight of her, the doctor, who had plainly braced himself behind a most forbidding aspect, leaped forward with a low cry and a complete change of manner.
“Mrs. Denby!” he gasped. But instantly he fell back; for the young woman, for all the world like a tenpenny-dreadful stage heroine, hissed out a tragic “Sh-h! I don’t want anybody to know my name!” with a cautious glance toward the none-too-rapidly disappearing Hawkins.
“But what does this mean?” demanded Frank Gleason, when he could find words. “Where’s Burke?”
“He’s left me.”
“Left you! Impossible!”
“Yes.” She drew in her breath convulsively. “He says it’s only to Alaska with his father; but that’s just to let me down easy.”
“Oh, but, Mrs. Denby—”
“You needn’t try to make me think any different,” she interposed wearily, sinking into the chair the doctor placed for her; “‘cause you can’t. I’ve been over everything you could say. All the way down here I didn’t have anything to do only just to think and think. And I see now—such lots of things that I never saw before.”
“But, why—how do you know—what made you think he has—left you?” stammered the doctor.
“Because he’s ashamed of me; and—”
“Oh, Mrs. Denby!”
“You don’t have to say anything about that, either,” said Mrs. Denby very quietly. And before the dumb agony in the eyes turned full upon him, he fell silent.
“There ain’t any question as to what has been done; it’s just what I’m going to do,” she went on wearily again. “He sent me ten thousand dollars—Burke’s father did; and—”
“John Denby sent you ten thousand dollars!” exploded the doctor, sitting erect.
“Yes; a check. I’ve got it here. He sent it for a playday, you know,” nodded Mrs. Denby, shifting the weight of the heavy baby in her arms. “And—and that’s why I came to you.”
“To—to me,” stammered the doctor, growing suddenly alertly miserable and nervous again. “A—a playday! But I—I—that is—how—”
“Oh, I’m not going to take the playday. I couldn’t even think play—now,” she choked. “It’s—” Then in a breathless burst it came. “Doctor, you can—you will help me, won’t you?—to learn to stand and walk and talk and eat soup and wear the right clothes and finger nails and hair, you know, and not say the wrong things, and everything the way Burke’s friends do—you and all the rest of them—you know, so I can be swell and grand, too, and he won’t be ashamed of me! And is ten thousand dollars enough to pay—for learning all that?”
From sheer inability to speak, the man could only fall back in his chair and stare dumbly.
“Please, please don’t look at me like that,” besought the young woman frenziedly. “It’s just as if you said you couldn’t help me. But you can! I know you can. And I can do it. I know that, too. I read it in a book, once, about a girl who—who was like me. And she went away and got perfectly grand clothes, and learning, and all; and then she came back; and he—he didn’t know her at first—her husband, and he fell in love with her all over again. And she didn’t have near so much money as I’ve got. Doctor, you will help me?”
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