GI Brides (56 page)

“Listen!” said Dale. “Let’s make a game of this and get really interested in it. Let’s go upstairs right away and see what you think about which room we should prepare.”

“Oh, I know which room she will want, if she takes any,” said Corliss. “She’ll want the room you gave to me, the one where she used to take her naps, and George’s room would be just right for the nurse while she is here. George and I can park anywhere, down in the living room on the couches, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” said Dale. “You can come in my room with me, Corliss, and George can go up in the front third-story room, if he doesn’t mind. It isn’t very large, but there is a comfortable bed up there. I used to sleep there myself sometimes when Grandmother had company. There is a bureau, too, and a chair, so I guess you could be comfortable.”

“Sure I can. I’ll get along anywhere. That will be swell.”

“Well, come on up and see what you think,” said Dale, and they trooped happily upstairs.

“You can put your things in the hall closet, Corliss. It’s all empty. I took everything out of it yesterday and packed them away in trunks in the storeroom upstairs, and Hattie cleaned it, so it’s all ready for you. Do you want to move your things now? I think it might cheer your mother up if she knew we had everything ready for her and the nurse.”

“Sure, I’ll move them right away. I think this is going to be fun,” said Corliss. “Are you going to move upstairs now, George?”

“Okay,” said George. “It
might
have some effect on Mom if she knew everything was all fixed. And we could get used to it. Then Hattie can get everything ready for Mom and the nurse.”

“All right, but here is something else I want to tell you first,” said Dale. “There is Grandmother’s room, of course, and if you think your mother would rather have that I can take Grandmother’s things out of the room and pack them away, and I will if you think your mother would prefer that. Or, if either of you would rather have it than the other plans I suggested.”

“But I thought you said you didn’t want anybody to have that room, Dale. I thought you said you wanted to keep everything just as she had left it.” This came from Corliss, spoken thoughtfully.

“I know. I did want to keep it just as she left it for a while,” said Dale. “But perhaps I was wrong to feel that way. If you think I should give it up, I’ll be glad to do so. I want your mother to be comfortable. Or, Corliss, if
you
still would like to have that room, I can arrange that. I don’t want to be selfish.”

“No,” said Corliss sharply. “I don’t want the room, and I don’t much think mother would. Anyway, I don’t think she should have it, not after the way she’s acted to you.”

“No,” said George. “She shouldn’t, and neither should Corliss. You have been awfully good to us, and you have a right to do what you want to with your own house. No, I think the other arrangement is much better.”

“Wait,” said Dale, taking a key out of her breast pocket. “I want to show you the room, and perhaps you will understand why I felt almost as if it was a sacred place. But I guess that was silly, and if Grandmother’s room is going to make things easier, why here it is, and it shall be up to you who is to have it.”

Dale put the key into the lock and flung the door open, and the two cousins stood solemnly in the doorway and looked around, wide eyed and interested.

“Why, it’s sweet,” said Corliss, two great tears gathering in her eyes. “I don’t wonder you didn’t want me to come barging into this room. It looks just like I remember Grandmother.”

Suddenly Dale reached over and kissed Corliss softly on her forehead. “You’re a dear!” she said. “I’m so glad you feel that way. I was afraid you would want to make fun of the quaint old-fashioned things, and I just couldn’t stand that. And now since you feel this way, I don’t mind if you come in here to sleep. I really don’t, Corliss. And I think Grandmother would like it, too. That will likely be more comfortable for you than sleeping in my room me.”

“No,” said Corliss, shrinking back. “I’d love to share your room. I really would. I’d like it a lot. But I’m glad you let me see this room. It somehow seems to be a real place, and I think I understand you better for seeing it.”

“Yes,” said George, huskily. “I’m glad you showed it to us. And I don’t blame you for wanting to keep it as she left it. I know just how you feel about it. And I’m glad Corrie thinks so, too. If anybody sleeps there, it ought to be you, Dale. Grandmother would like that better, I’m sure. But anyway, Mom wouldn’t choose it for herself, I know, because she told me that other room where she took her naps was the nicest in the house, she thought. It wasn’t as noisy as Grandmother’s. That fronts on the street, and she said you could hear all the children crying and shouting and playing. No, Dale, you better just keep that room as it was. Open it up sometimes if you want to, but don’t give it to any of us. Not now. Come on and let’s get Mom’s room fixed. Anything you want carried anywhere, Dale? I’m strong and able.”

“Thank you,” Dale said, smiling. “We’ll see. Now, let’s fix your mother’s room first. What needs moving out? Corliss, have you heard your mother say she didn’t like anything in this room?”

Corliss looked around with troubled eyes. “Well yes,” she said reluctantly. “Mother never liked that bureau. She said the one in the room you intend for the nurse was much larger and more roomy. She liked the big mirror, too.”

“Why, that is easily changed,” said Dale. “Come on, George, let’s get to work. We’ll move the other one out of the way and then there will be a place to put this. And Corliss, what else did she want changed?”

“Well, she said she’d rather have one of the overstuffed chairs from the living room, instead of that straight-up-and-down one that had long rockers to fall over. But I don’t think you ought to change that. The big chair belongs in the living room, and this rocker wouldn’t fit there.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said Dale. “What difference does that make? A chair is a chair, and they are easily changed. Anything else?”

“No,” laughed Corliss, “only that engraving of the Lord’s Prayer in the gold frame. She said she didn’t like it, and she always turned it around to face the wall when she lay down. She said she didn’t want to always be confronted by religion. I’m ashamed to tell you this, but you asked me.”

“That’s all right, Corliss. We’ll have those things changed in a jiffy. Are you sure there was nothing else she didn’t like?”

“No, that’s all, except the big pincushion. She said it was all out of style to have cushions like that.”

“Well,” said Dale, laughing, “if that’s all, I guess we can get by.”

“But I don’t think this is right, Dale,” said George, “to make all this trouble for you, and when she may not come after all. I don’t think it is a bit polite of Mom to want it.”

“There, there, George. We want to get this room so she will like it, don’t we? Well, don’t let’s stop on little things like that. Let’s make it nice for her, the way she wants it, and maybe she will be happy about coming. And say, I’ve been thinking. Suppose you two go to the hospital without me now, and then you can tell her about it and not feel hampered with having me around. Then she can tell you just what she really wants. I think that will be better, don’t you?”

“But we’d rather you went along,” said Corliss.

“Next time, dear,” promised Dale. “Besides, I have to go to that committee meeting about the school and tell them what I had planned and introduce the girl who is to take my place. It really is better this way just for this time. Now come, let’s get this furniture in place and get it done so it looks pretty and you can draw a word-picture of it for your mother.”

The young people worked with a will and soon had the two rooms in lovely order. Dale went to her store of pretty linens and selected two of her nicest bureau doilies and some of her best towels and the rooms looked pretty as pictures.

“We’ll get a rosebud or two for the bureau, and I’ll put my bud vase in here,” said Dale as they stood surveying it all when it was finished. And even Hattie came to stand in the doorway and look.

“I’ll take the curtains down, Miss Dale, and wash ’em,” said Hattie. “It won’t take long to iron ’em and get ’em up, and when you come back you’ll be surprised.”

“Thank you, Hattie,” said George suddenly. “And Dale, I’ll take that engraving up to my room. Do you mind? I seem to feel I’d like to have it where I can look at it for a while. It’s very old, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Dale. “It belonged to great-grandfather, Allan Dale, and that’s one reason why I have always liked it. Yes, take it to your room. I’ll be glad to think you are looking at it sometimes. And now, it’s getting late and you two ought to be going. Remember, you have a very important mission, and I’ll be praying for you while you are gone. Good-bye.”

They separated, and the brother and sister went solemnly on their way, planning together their campaign.

“We’ll have to settle that matter of her old rat of a lawyer first,” said George. “I’ll have to make her understand that he is gone absolutely and we can’t possibly get hold of him, and then you can start in and tell her about the room if you want to, Corrie, and what we’ve been helping Dale to do. Don’t forget to tell her how she offered you Grandma’s room if you wanted it. That’ll make a big hit with Mom.”

“I don’t know if she’ll listen to anything I say about the room. She got pretty mad at me this morning when I tried to ask her when she was coming back home. She said she had no home to come to, and a lot of other things, and then Dale spoke up and told her she never meant to hurry her away and that of course she wanted her to come here now, that this was the proper place for her to be getting well, and she was as nice as could be. But it didn’t do a bit of good. She just told me I needn’t get into hysterics on that subject, and you know, all that old stuff she always shuts me up with.”

“Well, never mind, you go ahead, Corrie. I’ll back you up, and we’ll try to work it out.”

“All right, I’ll try again,” sighed the girl, and they walked with discouragement up the steps of the hospital to their appointed task.

W
hen the two walked timidly into the hospital and up to their mother’s bed, she was partly sitting up against her pillows and eyeing them as if they were a couple of criminals plotting to keep her from her rights.

“Well,” she said, looking sharply at George, “where is my lawyer? I thought I told you to bring him with you. Where is he?”

The boy braced up bravely and looked at his mother courageously in the eye, a slightly apologetic smile on his lips.

“Sorry, Mother,” he said courteously, “so far as I can find out, he has gone out of the country. The nearest suggestion I could get from his office or his home either, is that he went to Canada to spend a few months in the woods and try to recover from a severe nervous breakdown. And he has ordered his secretary and what there is left of his family not to disclose his address to anybody. I’ve done my best to get some other answer, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to get any further information.”

Mrs. Huntley’s face was stony cold and the look she gave her children was as if she suspected them of making up this story. But after a few minutes of characteristic storming and questioning, she began to cry. Just big stormy tears pelting down her angry cheeks and her lips trembling almost pitifully.

Corliss looked around with a worried expression to see if the nurse was near, for if she was she would undoubtedly send them away for making her patient weep, and this really must be stopped.

Corliss got out a crisp little handkerchief, softly wiping her mother’s tears away, as gently as if she had been a baby, and the mother looked up astonished, the action was so unprecedented. Corliss had never been known to do the like before.

Then Corliss began to talk softly, quietly, as a mother might comfort a little child. “There, Mamma, don’t feel bad. There’ll be some other way. Don’t you worry. Listen. We’ve got some nice things to tell you. We’re getting ready for you to come home to the house. Dale and my brother and I have been working at it ever since lunch, and we’ve fixed it all up so prettily. We’ve moved the bureau you didn’t like, and got the nice big chair in your room and taken the old rocker out, and the picture you didn’t like is gone, too. We had a lot of fun doing it. Dale didn’t mind at all. In fact, she thinks it looks lots better. And she got out her very prettiest bureau doilies. And the curtains are being washed, all crisp and nice, and everything is going to be lovely. And we’ve fixed up the next room for your nurse, and we wondered if you couldn’t be allowed to come home in a day or two. It would be lots nicer for you there, and then we could talk about plans and things without having a lot of people listening the way they do here.”

Then the son spoke up. “Yes, Moms, I think that would be better. I thought I’d go down now and have a talk with the doctor and see what he says, and then we could get the ambulance and take you very comfortably.”

“No, no,
no
!” exclaimed the sick woman. “I can’t go till I see my lawyer. He’s taken all my money and he hasn’t done anything about it.”

“Never mind, Moms, we’ll see about that after we get you to the house—”

The mother stared at this boy who had always been bored at any planning for herself and didn’t know what to make of it all. “But I can’t go to Dale’s,” she mourned, more tears coming down.

Corliss got up and dabbed at the tears again. “Don’t worry, Mamma,” she said coaxingly, “we’re looking after you, and yes, you
can
go to Dale’s house. She
wants
you. She really does. If you could have seen her going around with her eyes so bright, smiling and planning to put pretty things in your room, you would be sure she wants you. You’ll like it there. And Hattie has been planning to make some spoon bread for you. Come on, cheer up, Muv, and let’s have a happy time. And when we get you home and you’re really well, then we can talk over plans for what we’ll do next.”

So they kept on coaxing, and the mother, amazed to have some real loving comfort offered her, finally settled down and ceased her objections. George, delighted at the outcome, began to think of Dale’s promise when they came away, to be praying for them. Did prayer really ever do any good?