The Return of Peter Grimm by David Belasco (chrysanthemum read aloud txt) 📕

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"Old Mynheer Grimm's come back, Mrs. Batholommey."

She gurgled wordlessly, then sputtered:

"What are you talking about, child? 'Old Mynheer Grimm,' as you call him, is dead. You know that."

"No, he isn't," stoutly contradicted Willem. "He's come back. He's in this room right now. At least," he added as he glanced about and could not feel the Dead Man's presence, "at least he was a minute ago. I know, because I've been talking to him."

"Absurd!"

"I've been talking to him. He was standing just where you are now."

Mrs. Batholommey instinctively started. In fact, despite her age and bulk and the fact that she was built for endurance rather than for speed, she jumped high into the air, with an incredible lightness and agility, and came to earth several feet away from the spot Willem had designated.

"At least," explained the boy, "he _seemed_ to be about there. But he seemed to be _everywhere_."

Recovering her smashed self-poise, Mrs. Batholommey frowned with lofty majesty, tempered by womanly concern.

"You are feverish again," she said. "I hoped you were all over it. You're light-headed, you poor little fellow."

Kathrien, the bed being re-made, hurried downstairs to get Willem.

"His mind is wandering," said Mrs. Batholommey. "He imagines all sorts of ridiculous, impossible things."

Kathrien dropped into a chair by the fire and gathered the fragile little body into her lap.

"Yes," went on Mrs. Batholommey, "he is out of his head. I think I'll run over and get the doctor."

"You need not trouble to," said Peter Grimm. "_I_ have sent for him. Though he doesn't know it. He is coming up the walk."

The Dead Man turned toward the front door, the old quizzical smile on his lips.

"Come in, Andrew," he said. "I'm going to give you one more chance at the theory you were wise enough to form and are not wise enough to practise."

Dr. McPherson entered.

"I thought I'd just drop in for a minute before bedtime," said he, "to see how Willem----"

"Oh, Doctor!" cried Mrs. Batholommey. "This is providential. I was just coming to get you. Here's Willem. We found he'd gotten out of bed and wandered down here. He is worse. Much worse. He's quite delirious."

"H'm!" commented Dr. McPherson, touching the child's face and then laying a finger on the fast, light pulse. "He doesn't look it. He has a slight fever again, but----"

"Oh, he said old Mr. Grimm was here!" bleated Mrs. Batholommey. "Here in this room with him."

"What?" gasped Kathrien.

But the doctor seemed to regard the statement as the most natural thing imaginable.

"In this room?" he repeated in a matter of fact tone. "Well, very possibly he is. There's nothing so remarkable about that, is there?"

"Nothing _remarkable_?" squealed Mrs. Batholommey; then, bridling, she scoffed: "Oh, of course. I forgot. You believe in----"

"In fact," pursued McPherson, getting under weigh with his pet idea, "you'll remember, both of you, that I told you he and I made a compact to----"

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Batholommey with a shudder. "That absurd, horrible 'compact' you told us about! It was positively blasphemous!"

But McPherson was looking speculatively down at Willem, and did not accept nor even hear the challenge to combat.

"I've sometimes had the idea," said he, "that the boy was a 'sensitive.' And this evening, I've been wondering----"

"No, you haven't, Andrew," denied Peter Grimm. "It's _I_ who have been doing the 'wondering'; through that Scotch brain of yours. _I'm_ making use of that Spiritualistic hobby of yours because you're too dense to hear me except through some rarer mortal's voice."

"----Wondering," continued the doctor, "whether--perhaps----"

"Yes," declared Peter Grimm, as McPherson hesitated, "the boy is a 'sensitive,' as you call it."

"I really believe," declared McPherson, his last doubts vanishing, "that Willem _is_ a 'sensitive.' I'm certain of it. And----"

"A 'sensitive'?" queried Kathrien. "What's that?"

"Well," reflected the doctor, "it is rather hard to define in simple language. A 'sensitive' is what is sometimes known as a 'medium.' A human organism so constructed that it can be 'informed,' or 'controlled' (as the phrases go) by those who are--who have--er--who have--passed over."

He looked apologetically about as if to assure the possibly-present Peter Grimm that he had absolutely no intent of using so non-technical a word as "dead."

Peter Grimm acknowledged the compliment with a laugh.

"Oh, say it, Andrew! Say it!" he adjured. "There _is_ no 'death' and there are no 'dead,' as this world understands the words. So one term is as good as another. 'Dead' or 'passed over.' It's all one. Neither phrase means anything. Don't be afraid of offending me."

"And Willem is like that?" asked Kathrien.

"I am sure of it," answered McPherson. "Now, Willem----"

"I think I'd better put the boy to bed!" hastily interposed Mrs. Batholommey, coming between the doctor and his proposed "subject."

"Please!" rapped McPherson. "I propose to find out what ails Willem. That is what I'm here for. And I'll thank you not to interfere, Mrs. Batholommey. I never break in on your good husband's pulpit platitudes, and I'll ask you to show the same courtesy toward _me_. Now then, Willem----"

"Kathrien," expostulated Mrs. Batholommey, "you surely aren't going to permit----?"

A peremptory gesture from McPherson momentarily checked the pendulum of her tongue. Kathrien, too, was very evidently on the doctor's side.

"Willem," said McPherson quietly, "you said just now that Mr. Grimm was in this room. What made you think so?"

"The things he said to me," returned Willem, readily enough.

His simple reply had a galvanic effect on his three hearers.

"_Said_ to you?" bleated Mrs. Batholommey. "_Said_? Did you say 'said'?"

"Why, Willem!" gasped Kathrien.

"_Old_ Mr. Grimm?" insisted Dr. McPherson. "Willem, you're certain you mean _old_ Mr. Grimm? Not Frederik?"

"Why, yes," assented Willem with calm assurance. "Old Mynheer Grimm."

And now, even Mrs. Batholommey's awed curiosity dulled her chronic conscience-pains into momentary rest. And, with Kathrien, she sat silent, eager, awaiting the doctor's next move.

"And," continued McPherson, "what did Mr. Grimm say to you? Think carefully before you answer."

"Oh," replied Willem, in the glorious vagueness of childhood, "lots and lots of things."

"Oh, really?" mocked Mrs. Batholommey, the disappointing answer freeing her from the grip of awe.

Again McPherson raised a warning hand that balked further comment from her. And he returned to the examination.

"Willem," said he, "how did Mr. Grimm look?"

"I didn't see him," answered the child.

"H'm!" sniffed Mrs. Batholommey.

"But, Willem," urged McPherson, "you must have seen _something_."

"I--I thought I saw his hat on the peg," hesitated the boy.

All eyes turned involuntarily and in some fear toward the hat-rack.

"No," went on Willem, looking at the vacant peg, "it's gone now."

"Doctor," remonstrated Mrs. Batholommey, impatiently, "this is so silly! It----"

"I wonder," whispered Kathrien to McPherson over the boy's head, "I wonder if he really _did_--do you think----?"

She did not finish the sentence. A growing look of disappointment and troubled doubt on McPherson's grim face made her reluctant to voice the question that her mind had formed.

"Willem!" said the Dead Man earnestly, pointing towards the pieced-together picture as he spoke. "Look! Show it to her!"

"Look!" echoed Willem, pointing in turn to the photograph. "Look, Miss Kathrien! That's what I wanted to show you when you called to me to go to bed."

"Why!" exclaimed Kathrien, following the direction of the eager little finger. "It's his mother! It's Anne Marie!"

"His mother!" echoed Mrs. Batholommey, focussing her near-sighted eyes on the likeness. "Why, so it is! Well, of all things! I didn't know you'd heard from Anne Marie."

"We haven't," said Kathrien.

"Then how did the photograph get into the house?"

"I don't know," answered the girl. "I never saw the picture before. It is none we've had. How strange! We've all been waiting for news of Anne Marie. Even her own mother doesn't know where she is, and hasn't heard from her in years. Or--or maybe Marta has received the picture since I----"

"I'll ask her," said Mrs. Batholommey, all eagerness now that something tangible was before her.

She bustled off into the kitchen in search of the old housekeeper.

"If Marta didn't get it," mused Kathrien, her face strained with puzzling thoughts, "who _did_ have this picture? And why weren't the rest of us told? Every one knew how eager we were for news of Anne Marie. And who tore up the picture? Did you, Willem?"

"No!" declared the boy. "It _was_ lying here, torn. I mended it."

"But," persisted Kathrien, "there's been no one at this desk,--except Frederik.--Except Frederik," she repeated, half under her breath.

Mrs. Batholommey came back from her kitchen interview, bubbling with importance.

"No," she announced, "Marta hasn't heard a word from Anne Marie. And only a few minutes ago she asked Frederik if any message had come. And he said, no, there hadn't."

"I wonder," suggested Kathrien, "if there _was_ any message with the photograph."

"I remember," volunteered Mrs. Batholommey, "one of the letters that came for poor old Mr. Grimm was in a blue envelope and felt as if it had a photograph in it. I put it with some others in the desk and I told Frederik about it this evening."

Kathrien glanced over the desk and at the floor around it in search of further clues. She saw, in the jardiniere, the charred remnants of a letter and pointed it out to the others. She drew from the debris the unburned corner of a blue envelope.

"That's the one!" cried Mrs. Batholommey. "That's it! The same colour."

"You say the envelope was addressed to my uncle?"

"Yes. It gave me such a turn to see those letters all addressed to a man who wasn't alive to----"

"Oh, what does it all mean?" cried the girl.

"We are going to find out," said McPherson with sudden determination. "Kathrien, draw those window shades close. I want the room darkened as much as possible."

"Oh, Doctor," protested Mrs. Batholommey as Kathrien hastened to obey, "you're surely not going to----?"

"Be quiet. You needn't stay unless you want to."

"Oh, I'll stay. It's my duty. But I don't approve. Please understand that."

Kathrien had returned to her place by the fire and had lifted Willem back on her lap. The doctor, gazing into space, said in a low, reverential tone:

"Peter Grimm! If you have come back to us, if you are in this room--if this boy has spoken truly,--give us some sign, some indication----"

"Why, Andrew, I can't," answered the Dead Man. "Not to _you_. I have, to the boy. I can't make you hear me, Andrew. The obstacles are too strong for me."

"Peter Grimm," went on the doctor after a moment of dead silence, "if you cannot make your presence known to me--and I realise there must be great difficulties--will you try to send your message by Willem? I presume you _have_ a message?"

Another space of tense silence.

"Well, Peter," resumed McPherson patiently, "I am waiting. We are all waiting."

"Then stop talking and listen to Willem," ordered Peter Grimm.

The doctor involuntarily glanced at the boy. Willem's wide-open eyes were glazed like a sleep-walker's. The hands that had been folded in his lap now hung limply at his sides. His lips parted, and droning, mechanical, lifeless