The Challengers (16 page)

Melissa followed her to a clean bare room like a kitchen: long empty tables, a great refrigerator, a gas stove, and a sink. The nurse produced a box of crackers, and Melissa drank the milk and ate and felt refreshed.

"Sorry I can't give you a room to rest in," said the nurse, reappearing for a moment just as Melissa finished her repast, "but that's against the rules. But I brought you a pillow, and there's no one in the waiting room on this floor now. You can turn out the light and lie down on the couch for a while. Did you say you had someone on this floor sick?"

"Why, no," said Melissa, flushing guiltily, "my brother is up on the next floor, but I was walking up and met you. Perhaps I don't belong here. Should I go up to the next floor waiting room?"

"Oh, no, that's all right. Just go in here. This one is empty, and you might find a lot of gabbing people up there." Melissa, remembering the strange old woman, thankfully walked into the darkness of the empty room and curled down on a lumpy davenport with her pillow.

She thought she was tired enough to fall asleep at once, but instead she had to live over again the whole awful day. Those dreadful Hollisters! The terrible hour in the ward watching poor Steve! Even the poor old babbling woman and her erring daughter. What a troublous world it was. How it needed a God or someone to help. But it was out of the question to believe in a God in a world like this one.

She fell asleep at last wondering, fearfully, what the morrow would bring forth.

It was nearly midnight when Phyllis walked in on her anxious mother, with Butcher Brady just behind her, his genial face in a broad grin.

"I told ya I'd find her all right," he said, wagging his head and beaming. "I just hadta drive up one street and down the other a coupla times, and there she was right on the sidewalk walking along as fast as she could."

"Walking!" said Mrs. Challenger, lifting a white face, from which the anxiety had not yet faded. "Oh, Phyllis, my child! How frightened I have been! And what were you walking for at this time of night? Didn't you have money for carfare? I told you to be sure--"

"Yes, Mother," lilted Phyllis, "I had it, but I came on a bus from way uptown, and it stopped only three blocks from here. I thought it was better to walk than hang around waiting for a car. There wasn't one in sight."

"But where have you been?
All day!
Phyllis, how
could
you stay so long without sending any word?"

"I couldn't help it, Mother dear," said Phyllis, taking off her hat and sitting down wearily. "I tried to get Mr. Brady at eight o'clock to let him know I would be late, but they didn't answer. He says they were all out. Why, you see, Mother, I got some work to do, and the man said he would give me ten dollars if I would get it done tonight. It was thousands of circulars that had to be addressed and stamped and sealed and mailed, and I just got them all done. Is there anything to eat, Mother? I'm hungry as a bear. I didn't dare stop to get any dinner; I was afraid I wouldn't get done, and it was getting so late."

"Oh, my dear!" gasped her mother, brushing away the quick tears. But Rosalie had already hurried into the kitchen and was back in a minute with a covered plate containing a nice warm dinner that she had set in the warming oven for her sister and a glass of cold milk from the refrigerator.

Phyllis sat down and began to eat, while the others hovered near watching her, eager with questions. Even Butcher Brady lingered by the door wistfully, eager as the rest.

"But how did you get work, Phyllis?" asked the mother. "Was it one of our friends who gave it--?"

"No, Mother," said Phyllis, setting down her glass of milk, "it was just a man, a stranger. His name is Lucius Brown, Incorporated. You see, I had a plan when I left this morning. I had decided to take a street and just go into every place of business and ask for the proprietor, and ask if there was anything at all he needed done, even if it was only for a day."

"What an idea, child!"

"Well, there wasn't apparently any use in trying for a regular job. I'd answered all the advertisements I found and asked all the people I knew that would have any likelihood of needing a helper. I started away uptown because I had seen a notice in a window on that street, and I thought perhaps they still wanted someone, but I found it was filled, of course."

"Poor child!" murmured Mrs. Challenger.

"So then I started going into every place up one side of the block," went on Phyllis, buttering the bread that Rosalie brought her. "There was a baker and confectioner, a drugstore, a wholesale toy place, a news agency, a secondhand place, a cheap restaurant--"

"Oh, Phyllis.
Not
a place like that!"

"Sure, Mother, I'd take anything that wasn't actually low down. Well, and then I came to this place. A kind of stationer's, with dusty pencils and erasers in the window. I almost didn't go in; it seemed such a kind of dusty, useless little place. But I'd vowed to try every place on the block, so I went.

"There was a customer in there and a young man showing him fountain pens. I asked for the proprietor, and he nodded toward the back of the store. Mr. Brown was at the telephone talking, so I went back and stood in front of the desk waiting.

"I could see he was worried and very impatient with the people on the wire, and he looked at me as if he would bite me. I almost turned and ran. But just then he turned to me and snapped: 'What do
you
want? Can't you see I'm busy?' 'I'll wait,' I said. 'What do you want?' he snapped again just like a dog barking. It didn't seem worthwhile, but I said my little speech just to have it over with: 'I've come in to see if you've got anything at all I could do for you today. I've got to earn some money, and I'll work by the day.' He grunted and looked me up and down. 'Can you write?' he asked and shoved a desk pen and pad at me. 'Of course,' I said. 'Well, write down your name and address.' So I wrote it. 'That'll do,' he snapped. 'When can you go to work?' 'Now,' I said. 'Will you last out the day?' 'I certainly will,' I said. 'Who are you?' he asked me, looking me through as if his eyes were gimlets. 'Did you ever work before?' I said I was the daughter of a university professor and had done a lot of his secretarial work, and he was sick and I had to earn some money right away. I said I would like to be paid by the day if possible.

"He hung up the receiver and said: 'All right. I'll give you ten dollars if you'll get every one of those circulars addressed and stamped and sealed and in the mail before midnight tonight. I was trying to get the agency for a secretary, but they are so slow I can't wait.'

"There was an awful stack of them and I hadn't an idea how long it would take to do it, but I said I'd do my best, and I went right to work. Of course, I was a little slow at first, but I'd write addresses till my hand ached and then I would fold and put in envelopes awhile, and so I managed, but I just got the last one finished about half an hour ago."

"Didn't you have any lunch, sister?" asked Rosalie aghast.

"Yes," said Phyllis, "I had two sandwiches in my handbag, and I ran down to the corner and got an apple to eat with them. That was all the time I could spare. I was afraid I wouldn't get them done."

"And did he pay you, sister?"

"Yes. Here's the ten-dollar bill. He came in at half past ten and gave it to me. He said I was a first-rate worker and if I didn't have anything else by that time, I might come back Monday. He might have more work for me."

"Ten whole dollars in a day!" said Rosalie with shining eyes. "That's great, Phyllie dear!"

"She's some businesswoman!" said Brady, beaming on her. "Well, I guess I better be getting along or my missus will be wondering what's got me. Good night. I hope ye hear good news of yer son in the morning."

Mrs. Challenger looked up, suddenly anxious again.

"Oh, but isn't it strange that we haven't had word from Melissa yet? How many miles did you say it was?"

"Oh, she likely wouldn't get there till near midnight," hazarded the butcher cheerily, "and mebee the telegraph offices were all shut up."

They discussed Melissa and her journey after Brady had left, and Phyllis tried to cheer her mother.

"I don't see why you're so anxious, Mother," she said as she finished the last bite of her supper. "Melissa has good sense. What would you have her do? Turn down a perfectly good chance to go to Steve when it didn't cost her a cent? You know you would have had her go if you had had it to decide. You said yourself you couldn't get away without telling Father all about it, and that wouldn't be so good. These people must be nice, kind people to stop and suggest taking her. Having a son in that college, of course they're sort of nice people, I suppose."

"Oh, I suppose so," sighed Mrs. Challenger. "But there are so many automobile accidents these days."

"Well, don't think about that. Nothing will likely happen to Lissa. Think how many people go in automobiles every day and don't ever get hurt. It's just because you are not used to having one. Why, you know, if we had one you wouldn't think anything of it. Lissa and I would both likely be driving everywhere."

"Well, it's all a terribly anxious time," murmured the weary mother. "You going off to work till midnight in a store with two strange men, and Lissa going miles away with strangers in a strange car. How do we know that she hasn't been kidnapped?"

Phyllis laughed.

"My eye! What would they kidnap Lissa for? They never do that unless there's money somewhere. No, not even when the girl is as pretty as Lissa. Cheer up, Mumsie! You don't make matters any better by worrying over an accident that may never happen. As for me, my boss has grizzly gray hair and an old wife, and the salesman in the dusty front of the store has a girl without any chin. She runs in from the ten-cent store around the corner where she works to see him at noon. Now, come, let's go to bed. Tomorrow's on the way."

"Gee!" said Bob, out of the darkness of his bedroom, after they thought he was asleep. "Gee, Phyl, you're great. Ten bucks in one day! Some sister, I'll say!"

 

The next morning was very hard for Mrs. Challenger. There was nothing she could do about their situation, no one she could think of further to go and see. Her soul shrank in horror from going again to those five men whom she had failed to meet yesterday. It was all foolishness anyway. They were not intimate friends. Why should they be responsible for mere acquaintances? There was nothing else she could do. She was shut up to prayer. If God couldn't do something, they would all have to go to the poorhouse. They couldn't expect Phyllis to earn ten dollars every day.

She could not settle to anything, even her desolate kind of prayer, until she heard from Melissa. She walked the floor from window to door and back again, watching for a telegram or for the butcher's boy to summon her to the telephone. And finally when Melissa's message did come, it brought her no comfort, only anxiety longer drawn out.

The telegram came about ten o'clock. The boy had been wandering around the city hunting for the right place because Melissa had made a mistake in the street number. That was another thing to be anxious about. Suppose Melissa sent another message; perhaps it, too, would be delayed. And so the morning passed in anxious waiting. Once she saw a newsboy pass and summoned him, spending a precious two cents for a paper and carefully studying the suburban
For Rent
advertisements, then sighing to think that even if she could find a reasonably cheap place in the outskirts of the city, where would the money come from to pay the rent, move their pitifully few belongings, and get their other things out of storage? Even ten dollars a day now and then wouldn't do all that.

The morning passed in anxiety with no further message from Melissa. The mother dared not go out of the house for a moment lest one would come while she was gone and she would miss it. She tried to understand why Melissa should be so silent. Surely she would understand how anxious they were. She conjured all sorts of reasons why no news had come. She could no longer worry lest her eldest daughter was kidnapped, for her first message had allayed that trouble. But as the hours dragged by, she grew fairly frantic.

She had done a little cooking early with a view to being ready for a possible visit to Steve, but there was very little else in the bare little house that she could do beyond making the beds and sweeping and dusting a little.

At last she went to her room, locked the door, and knelt down, with a feeling that now she must have it out with God somehow. If He had it in His power to set the life of the Challengers into smoother grooves and there was anything He was waiting for her to do--for them to do--it was time it was made clear. She was going to make a business of praying. It was the last thing left her. True, she came to it with little faith. She had an inward conviction that her prayers were about as worthless as if she were to write her requests on a piece of paper and go and lay them on some wealthy indifferent man's front-door steps.

However, she went into her room, and not being willing to have Bob or Rosalie or Phyllis perhaps come home unexpectedly and find her praying in the daytime, she locked her door. Praying at night was of course customary, in the dark by one's bedside, but praying in the daytime was out of the regular order of things, making almost too much of prayer, putting oneself in a class with fanatics. Mary Challenger did not analyze her feelings. She merely locked the door and knelt down. Then she tried to think of some new and convincing argument to put up before the throne on behalf of her suffering family.

It was strange how her mind wandered. "Oh God--" she said, and that was as far as she would get in her petition. "Oh God----" and her mind would wander off, trying to think of something more that she herself could do. Of course, it wouldn't be right to trouble God with what one could do for oneself. Perhaps she might pray that God would help her to think of someone to go to who would help her out of her difficulty. And her fertile brain would begin at the beginning of all their long list of friends of the years who might possibly do something if they knew the situation. But that was just the crux of the matter. She and Father didn't want their friends to know their desperate situation. They didn't want to be the objects of charity. Oh, if there was just someone, a near relative, loving, kind, with plenty of money! She wouldn't mind humbling herself to ask such a one. Surely--there must be something she could do--!