The Challengers (18 page)

Bob suddenly stamped out of the kitchen and up to his room, thumped around noisily for a minute or two, and then Phyllis, still standing by the window where he had left her, heard his door shut, and all was very still. Was Bob Challenger having audience with the King of heaven? Who could tell?

On her knees in the room next to her little son's knelt Mary Challenger, weeping her heart out now, sobbing incoherent sentences into the ear of the Almighty.

"I've reached the end. . .!" she told God. "I've done my best, and it didn't do any good! I'm utterly helpless! If You can't help, we'll have to die! We'll all have to die! We're helpless! Utterly helpless! Ruined! Undone! My boy Steve! Oh, don't let him die! My precious little Lissa! Don't let anything awful have happened to her. Oh, God! I've sinned! I haven't taught her to believe in You. I thought I had, but I hadn't. She said awful things about You, I know, but forgive her, Lord. Don't punish her for it. It was my fault. Oh, God, forgive me! I am a sinner! Oh, God, my poor husband! My poor children! We have lost everything to You. If You don't help, we perish! Oh, God! Hear my cry! Out of the depths of despair, I cry!"

And between every cry, she listened, and listened, for the sound of a car that did not come. Melissa, dear, pretty, proud little scatterbrained Melissa, out somewhere alone in the dark and the night with strangers!

Melissa awoke from her night on the hard wicker couch in the hospital reception room stiff and sore. Though she had her coat on, she was chilled to the bone. Her dress was crumpled, her hair was tumbled about her face, and she felt sticky and dirty.

She woke to the smell of antiseptics, to the sound of the ambulance siren, to the sight of a stretcher being borne though the hall to the operating room and a glimpse of a wan frightened face.

She sat up quickly and gazed about her half dazed. Then a nurse hurrying along the hall aroused her to the sense of her whereabouts.

She put her hands up to her hair and tried to locate her hairpins. While she was doing it, a handsome young intern put his head in the door and smiled familiarly at her.

"Hello, kid! It's morning, didn't you know it? Been there all night? Rocky bed you had. Cheer up, it is another day!"

She resented the tone of familiarity, but somehow his voice did cheer her as he went on his way. After all, she had nothing to be so haughty about. Here she was sleeping like a young bum in a public waiting room. Why should he think she was any better than anybody else? Well, perhaps she wasn't. She had never had such a thought before, she a Challenger; "that pretty Challenger girl" people called her sometimes. But here she was dragging the proud Challenger name down to the common walks of life, her brother in a hospital ward, and she sitting up all night out in the open as it were.

She went to the washroom and bathed her face, combed her hair, and smoothed out her crumpled garments. Then she slipped up to the next floor and tried to get a glimpse of Steve. But there was a screen close around Steve's bed, and groans were coming from behind it. She could see the white skirts of the nurse now and then, and her rubber-soled feet beneath the screen, but she could not see her brother. She shooed her severely away, the day head nurse, not the one she had seen last night. She tried to find out something but was only told that the doctor had not made his rounds yet and no information was available. After she had gone and Melissa was walking slowly toward the waiting room again, she met another nurse who smiled and volunteered to find out for her what kind of a night her brother had passed. But she came back a few minutes later with the news that he had been very delirious all night and his condition was little different from yesterday.

With a heavy heart, Melissa decided to go out and hunt for something to eat.

The brisk air of the morning brought a faint color to her cheeks, but she found that her limbs were trembling under her. She had never spent a wakeful night like last night in her life, and she did not know what to make of herself, she felt so wretched.

It was a long walk down to the village, almost a mile, Melissa judged, perhaps more. She found a little restaurant and ate a frugal breakfast of toast and coffee. She dared not spend much. It frightened her to see how fast her two dollars were fading away, and she must telegraph this morning as soon as she could see the doctor.

She went into a grocery store and purchased a box of crackers, two oranges, and a small piece of cheese. These, she calculated, ought to get her through the day, with economy, so that she would not have to come down to the village again. She wanted to keep within her two dollars if possible.

The day stretched ahead of her as a long weary way full of anxiety. Oh, what should she do about Steve? Perhaps she should tell her mother to come at once in spite of what the nurse said about waiting till he would know her. What if Steve should die and no one there but herself!

She thought of the forlorn little bed yesterday, with the dying man and a group of weeping relatives. Would she be standing so, alone and weeping, by Steve before the day passed? She shuddered. She was afraid of death. It had never touched her before, save through a schoolmate whose funeral the class had attended in a body. She had wanted to stay away but was ashamed. She had shrunk behind the others, persistently avoiding a glimpse of the casket, telling her mates that she wanted to remember Frances how she was when she was alive. She had never looked upon a dead face. It would be terrible to look at a dead face of one she loved. Her own brother! Poor Steve! And they hadn't been able to send him the clothes he needed to go to a dance! Such fantastic things went through her mind.

The front entrance of the hospital was full of people when she got back. Visitors' hours had started. She shrank back and hated to pass people as she crossed the crowded corridor to the stairs. Every seat was full, and some people were standing. They stared at her sadly, every one with a tragedy upstairs somewhere. She hated it all that she should be classed with these worried, sorrowful people. There was a little sick baby with its head and shoulders strapped in a case, wailing pitifully, waiting for the baby clinic. Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow! Everywhere trouble. It really wasn't at all the pleasant world she had always thought. How could people stand it to have sorrow and sickness and death always walking about among them? Why hadn't some scientist invented something that would stop death, stop trouble? They couldn't do it; that was it. Why! Scientists weren't any more infallible than religionists. She had never realized that before. Ever since her year at college she had come to feel that scientists were the highest word in everything. They dared to fling down God and the Bible, yet they couldn't stop death, nor all sickness, nor all sorrow. They couldn't do a thing about sorrow. They could only tell you to have a good time while life lasted, but how could you when those you loved were in pain, were perhaps going to die?

Of course, some might tell you not to love anybody, just look out for yourself, develop your own personality, see how great you could become, and all that sort of bunk; but that didn't get you anywhere, either. Might as well be a Bolshevik and be done with it.

Wearily she climbed the stairs.

And now she found that she could get a glimpse of Stephen behind his screen. It was visitors' hours, and they would allow her to peek at him through just a small aperture.

There he lay swathed in his bandages, turning his head incessantly as yesterday, moaning and crying out. Muttering words she could not understand, with an occasional lucid word about the car or a call to Sylvia. How could she tell her mother about that Sylvia?

She ventured to ask one of the nurses if she knew Sylvia, but she shook her head. Later in the day, one nodded. Yes, she knew who she was. A "college widow," some of the girls called her. Melissa wondered just what that meant. She could see it was a term of contempt. She wondered if perhaps she ought to hunt her up and question her, be able to tell the family about her. Then she shrank from that and decided against it.

Once, wandering about the hospital halls because she just could not sit still any longer, she came into the private hall and passing a door saw Mrs. Hollister in a loud purple variegated-knit dress, sitting placidly in a big chair beside the bed in which lay a slimmer edition of Gene Hollister, only with a more conceited tilt to his nose than the only brother boasted.

She averted her gaze at once, hoping to escape notice and passed quickly on down the hall, but Mrs. Hollister had seen her and came paddling out after her.

"Miss Challenger!" she called. "Do come back and see my poor boy a little while. Jack's fairly frantic with having to lie still so long. He wants to see you."

She tried to excuse herself on the grounds that she must hurry down and try to waylay the doctor, but Mrs. Hollister assured her that she would get hold of no doctor at this hour and insistently drew her back.

Melissa could think of only one thing as she entered the room, that the nurse had said that Jack Hollister had been dead drunk when he was brought into the hospital. She lifted her big blue eyes seriously to his face and had to own that he was strikingly good-looking. A clear pallor over a face that knew its own best points, dark hair that curled engagingly, great blue eyes that dared any impudence and got away with it.

He held out a slim graceful hand and grasped her unwilling one, then looked her impertinently in the eyes.

"Say, the Challengers are all good-lookers, aren't they?" he said. "Isn't she a peach, Mater? Why didn't you think to bring her up here before? What's your name? Melissa? Say! That's an odd one. I'll call you Meliss, how's that? I want a name all my own, see? Got any boyfriend back home that calls you Meliss? Sit down on the edge of the bed, baby-girl, and hold my hand awhile. I feel better already. Say, what is the matter with Steve Challenger? He never told us what a little beaut his sister was! Sit down, Treasure. We'll have a great old time. You certainly are a pippin! Don't be afraid. Sit down!"

But Melissa, wide-eyed, shrank far away from the bed, her color high, her heart beating angrily. This was the same kind of thing that the older brother did, only a shade worse. How could she get out of here without angering the family? For she must go home with them tomorrow. How she dreaded it!

"I really can't stay," she said in a frightened little voice. "My brother is worse, I think, this morning. I must go right back. You will excuse me, please, if I hurry!"

But Mother Hollister had bulked herself in the doorway, and an exit was not an easy matter to negotiate, unless she simply thrust her aside.

"Oh, Steve'll be all right," said the young man cheerfully. "He's tough. He'll pull through. Steve's one of our great athletes. You don't kill him in a hurry. I asked the doc this morning about him. He said he was holding his own all right. You don't need to hold his hand, Treasure. He'll pull through. Anyway, he doesn't know anybody. The nurse told me so. He's only getting his for being such a fool as to stick by an old machine instead of getting out as I did while the getting was good. That machine's insured, and there won't be any trouble about that. Barney's glad it happened. He says his dad'll come across now with a new one, and that was what he wanted. He's been lending it to everybody in the hope of getting it crippled. His dad is kinda closefisted, you know, but he'll have to come across now. The only trouble is we're afraid of Steve. He's so darned honest he'll maybe blab that he was driving it and make a mess with the insurance company. Barney is pulling all the ways to get the thing through while Steve's delirious so they can't get his testimony."

Melissa stood spellbound listening, afraid to ask questions, afraid to stay, afraid to go.

"Aw, come on and sit down by me just a little while, Melissa," pleaded the young man with the caressing tone that got to many girls. "Meliss, Meliss, give me a kiss! There, I've made some poetry out of your name. Come over here and let's try it. Oh, don't mind the Mater; she's used to petting. Come on and kiss me, Meliss--"

But Melissa had fled, her cheeks flaming, her frightened heart beating wildly. What kind of terrible family was this anyway? And must she go home with them tomorrow? How was she ever to face that mother again? But of course she would have to. She would keep carefully out of sight till it came time to leave, and she would manage to sit with the mother, and then she would explain how sick her brother was and apologize for hurrying away.

The day held no respite for Melissa.

The doctor, when she at last got audience with him, had very little encouragement to give. He said that her brother was very ill indeed, that he had a great deal to contend with. He could not tell yet how serious the concussion would be. He looked her steadily, gravely in the eyes, with a kind of pity for her worn young face, but no time to talk about it. He agreed with the nurse, after he had heard the story, that there was no need to bring her mother away from her sick husband immediately, perhaps in a day or two; and then he looked at his watch and hurried off to an appointment of life and death somewhere else.

Melissa had a feeling when he left that she should run right home and send her mother back with all dispatch, yet there in her way stood the lack of money. What a barrier the lack of money could be! She must go home tomorrow with those awful Hollisters just to keep from spending Mr. Brady's money. It crackled in her breast and seemed a shield from many an alarm, but yet she must not spend it unless she had to, and at present she did not have to.

She went down to the second-floor visitors' room and ate her crackers and cheese in the sheltered corner where she could not be seen from the hall. She scuttled here and there out of sight like a little lost soul all the afternoon, only hovering now and again near the door where her brother lay, tossing his head and going over and over the same monotonous murmur. She felt that she would never again be able to forget the awfulness of that unearthly chant.

The nurses grew accustomed to her standing like a little shadow near the door. They ceased to shoo her off. They even smiled a hurried pity as they passed, and one of them called her into the kitchen and gave her a tray.