Treasured Brides Collection (31 page)

Natalie was silent for a moment.

“Well, suppose he did?” she said, with matter-of-factness in her tone. “I had a nice ride anyway, and he talked to me just as if I was any nice girl. He used to be in my class in high school, you know. It really wasn’t anything so very notable, just a few blocks in a pretty car, but it was fun and I’m glad I had it.”

“Yes, of course,” the mother hastened with belated pleasure to state. “So am I. How I wish you had a car of your own.”

“Oh now, Mother, what would we do with a car of our own, here in this street? Where would we keep it? On the front porch or out in the little old, forsaken chicken coop?”

At last Natalie got her mother to laughing a little. Then she suddenly sobered.

“Dear child!” she said, with a quiver in her voice. “There’s something else about this that makes me troubled. I wouldn’t want you to get interested in a handsome young man who might offer you a ride now and then, and mean nothing by it, and then break your heart.”

Natalie sat down in the rocking chair and broke out laughing, perhaps to help her hold back the tears, which were very near the surface this morning, for in spite of her brave words and cheery manner, things were looking pretty serious for her. She didn’t mean to tell her mother that there were only thirty-seven cents of the hemstitching money left after she purchased the supply of necessities she had just brought home. And that they had asked the landlord to let the rent run along until her first week’s pay came in before he might expect an installment on it. Poor child! She had been up and down, several times a night, trying to soothe her mother to sleep; rubbing her back with steady, patient hand; bathing her aching forehead with witch hazel; getting her a glass of milk, and the strain was beginning to tell on her. To tell the truth, it had been hard to contrast the difference between her own life and that of some of the members of her class whom she had seen in brief glimpses as she passed them on the street that morning, and her brave spirit had faltered several times.

So now, she had to hide her tears and put on a cheerful little comical manner.

“Oh, Mother dear! What a silly fraidycat you are! Do you take me for an absolute fool? Don’t you know I have no intention of falling for any boy, no matter how fine or how plain he might be. I’m going to hold Mother’s hand and stay at home and make life happy for you. Perhaps Janice will marry, and when I get old, I’ll make bibs and dress dolls for her children; but I’m just cut out for a grand old maid. I’m not going to break my heart for anybody. Now! Will you be good? It’s time for your broth, and if you find any more causes to worry, I’m going to send for the doctor. So there!”

So with coaxing and wiles she cheered her mother to a real smile and fed her broth, and chattered on about how she was going to make over her old green serge for a school dress for Janice, till the day settled into a quiet, peaceable groove of homely duties.

Then Janice breezed in with an announcement that she had an order to sew for a dozen handkerchiefs, and three pairs of pillowcases to hemstitch, and the sun shone in the tiny parlor bedroom.

Later when the mother was taking an afternoon nap and the sisters were doing up the brief kitchen work, and having a cheery conversation together about how they were both going to make ends meet, Natalie confided to her sister the story of her ride and her mother’s fears.

“Mums is afraid I’m going to lose my heart at once, of course.” She laughed.

“Well,” said Janice thoughtfully, “I shouldn’t think it would be a hard thing to do, Natty. I think he’s perfectly grand. There isn’t a single one of your class in high school that’s as good-looking as he is, nor as polite and really courteous. And he’s smart, too.”

“Oh, sure!” agreed Natalie, out of a heart that had held those same opinions through four long, lonely years in high school and three hard-working empty ones since. “That goes without saying. Why look lower than the best? That’s why I’m getting ready to be a cheerful spinster. I couldn’t possibly aim for the highest, so why aim at all? Oh, Jan! For pity’s sake, let’s talk about something practical. Do you realize that I’ve got a job, and that if we can get through till next Saturday, I’ll have a pay envelope? But how to get through till then is the problem. Suppose you take account of stock. Can we do it? There’s still thirty-seven cents in the treasury, but Mother’s wee dividend doesn’t come in for another six weeks yet. How about it? Could we live on beans for a day or two and leave the thirty-seven cents for mother’s extras? We can charge beef for broth for a week, if it comes to a pinch.”

“Sure we can,” said Janice gallantly. “I’ve got two pounds of rice, a box of gelatin, half a pound of sugar, and some junket tablets hidden away in case of emergency, and there’s still a quarter in my once fat pocketbook. We’ll manage to rub along. With all this you brought in today, we’ll live like kings. That meat will make a wonderful soup, and we’ll eat the meat, too, and then sandwiches and hash. Oh sure! And you got a stalk of celery. You extravagant thing! That’ll just put pep into any meal.”

“He threw that in,” said Natalie, laughing.

“Oh,
he
did!” said Janice, looking at her sister sharply. “Well, I guess Mother’ll have something else to worry about. Which is it to be, Natty, a bank president or a grocery man that I’m going to have for my best brother-in-law?”

“Oh, stop your nonsense,” said Natalie good-naturedly. “Come on and let’s clean this cupboard shelf, and find out, just to a grain, how much of everything we really have left. I shouldn’t wonder if by next week Mother will be able to be up a little each day, and perhaps the next week you could go back to school. Then we’ll have to work out a regular schedule of home work, so you won’t have too much on your hands while I’m in the store.”

So they scrubbed the cupboard shelves and set their meager array of eatables out grandly, apportioning them for each day of the week, jubilant that it was going to be possible to get through to the first paycheck.

“A shredded-wheat biscuit apiece, six days,” counted Natalie, “not counting tomorrow. We have oatmeal enough left for tomorrow.”

“His sister is very nice, too,” mused Janice, measuring out the rice carefully and putting it in a clean glass jar.

“What?” said Natalie, whirling around upon her sister. “Whose sister?”

“Chris Walton’s sister,” said Janice, her eyes on a tiny bag of raisins that suggested possible rice pudding, if an egg and a little milk could be spared. “We could have rice pudding for Mother’s birthday,” went on Janice thoughtfully. “She could eat that, surely. You know Friday is her birthday. We really ought to have some chicken broth. How about my going out and making a raid on our neighbor’s hencoop?”

“Is she indeed?” said Natalie. “What’s her name? How do you happen to know that she’s nice?”

“Who? The hen I’m going to raid? Now how could I possibly tell what her name is till I’ve met her?” said Janice, in an aggrieved tone.

“I was speaking of the bank president’s daughter,” said Natalie in a dignified tone, “but if you wish to be trivial, it doesn’t matter. What’s a stolen hen among friends?”

“Why,” said Janice, giggling, “she’s in my class in school. Her name is Elise. I think she’s nice because she never has any runs in her stockings, and she doesn’t use lipstick. We don’t have much to do with each other, of course, how could we? She has her own friends. But she smiled at me the other day when we passed in class. I like her. I think you can usually tell, don’t you? Even if you don’t know people very well. She never makes me feel the darkened-up runs in
my
stockings the way Gilda Carson does, nor how much too short my old blue dress is getting, and—anyhow, I like her.”

“Well, that’s nice,” said Natalie, irrelevantly. “So do I, if she smiled at you.” And she suddenly bestowed a resounding smack on the curve of her sister’s cheek.

“How about stewing these eight prunes?” said Janice, rubbing off her sister’s kiss with a grin. “Maybe Mother would like a taste, and they really have been here a long time. Not that I like them,” she finished with a grimace. “When you get to be a bank presidentess, or a lady grocer, whichever it is, please don’t let’s have prunes anymore. I’m ashamed to look a prune in the face, I’ve hated so many of them.”

“No, my dear, we’ll never have another prune when I attain either of those great estates. We’ll have grapefruit served in cracked ice or honeydew melon with lemon juice or black grapes from South Africa, just on one provision however, and that is if you cut out that nonsense and never speak of it again. Even in fun I don’t like it, Jan,” she added seriously. “If I should ever meet Chris Walton again, I should be ashamed to think we had ever talked such utter nonsense. Promise me, dear, you won’t!”

“You dear old funny, serious darling!” said the younger sister in a burst of admiration, “Of course not, if you don’t want me to. I was only kidding anyway. But seriously, Nat, I do wish you had some nice friends like that, and some good times like other girls.”

“I have all the good times I want,” said Natalie with a firm shutting of her lips. “Haven’t I the chance to go to Bible study? You don’t know how glad I am of that. I’ve wanted it ever since that first time I went. I’m so glad it doesn’t cost anything. I just love every minute of the hour. You are sure you don’t mind giving up Monday evenings?”

“Why should I mind, dearest dear? Where would I go? To the opera, or to Gilda Carson’s dance at the country club, or did you suppose a host of boyfriends were waiting outside the door to convince me to go to the movies or some other place of entertainment? No, rest your conscience, serious sister, I’ll only be falling asleep over my hemstitching or stealing an hour at a hoarded magazine story.”

“Oh, Jan, I wish you had some good times! I mean you will, too, when I get on a little further.”

“Oh, certainly, we’ll all have good times,” said Janice, waving the dish towel. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll retire to my hemstitching and earn a few honest pennies for a rainy day without prunes.”

Softly laughing, the two girls scurried upstairs to get their sewing, walking quietly lest they awaken their mother. They had good times together, these two girls, who were almost isolated from their own kind. They were perhaps closer to one another than most sisters, just because hard work and poverty had separated them from the girls who would have been their natural mates, if their father’s fortune had not been swept away when they were very young, and sickness and death had not changed their environment. They chattered quietly as they worked, talking over all the people they had met, all the little trifles that went to make up their days. Natalie asking questions about Janice’s school friends, recalling incidents of their older brothers and sisters, and Janice curious about the grocery store and her sister’s new environment.

At last Janice folded away her hemstitching.

“It’s getting too dark for you to work on that green serge any longer, Natalie,” she said, “and I can’t see to pull the threads. We can’t afford to get glasses, so we better stop. What’s for supper? I’m hungry as a bear.”

“Toast and tea and a cup of junket for Mother,” said Natalie, folding the breadths of the skirt she had just succeeded in cleverly piecing so it wouldn’t show.

“There’s codfish enough left for you and me,” she added firmly, “creamed codfish on toast with a dish of dried applesauce apiece, and warmed-over cocoa. We simply have got to hoard every crumb till next Saturday. Can you stand it, Jan?” She looked at her sister anxiously.

“Sure thing,” said Janice bravely, almost blithely. “Aren’t I husky enough to survive a week of codfish and applesauce? I might even give up the applesauce if you’d ask me, especially the dried part. I’m not particularly partial to dried apples. But, of course, they’re not nearly as scratchy to the tongue as dried peaches. I abominate
them
!”

“We’re having codfish tonight so we can have a meatball apiece tomorrow,” appeased the sister.

“Noble sacrifice!” Janice giggled. “ ‘On to the codfish! Let joy be unconfined! No sleep till morn while youth and beauty meet—’ Is that the way it goes?”

“Stop your nonsense,” said Natalie, smiling. “You’ll wake Mother.”

“Mother is awake. I heard her stirring as I came by the door. I’m going to light her lamp now. Is her toast ready?”

So they presently gathered about the mother with a tempting tray, tempting as to the delicacy of its preparation if not filled with rare food. And the three of them settled down to cheer one another, a cheerful, brave little trio, trusting God and upholding one another in all the bright, tender ways at their command.

T
he sound of a body falling below stairs brought Chris swiftly to his senses. He sprang into action, but even so, his mother was there before him. He found her kneeling at the foot of the stairs, stooping over his father, who lay huddled here with blood upon the floor beside him, and blood on the breast of his bathrobe.

“Call Dr. Mercer!” she said in a low strained voice, and Chris hurried to the telephone, his heart beating wildly. What had happened? Was his father shot through the heart? Oh God, what had happened? He thought he should always see that picture of his mother in her delicate blue robe kneeling beside his stricken father, her soft gray curls falling over her slender shoulders, and that look of bravery in her eyes. How pretty his mother must have been when she was a girl! That was a strange thought to come at such an awful time, yet it flung itself at him as he lifted down the receiver.

He was back to the hall in an instant.

“He’s on the way,” he said soothingly. “Can’t I lift him up?”

“No, we’ll wait till the doctor comes. Get a glass of water!”

He sprang for the water, noting as he passed the dining room window that it was pushed halfway up from the bottom.

“What was Dad doing down here?” he whispered as he brought the water.

“He heard a noise and came down to investigate,” murmured the mother. “I tried to make him wait and telephone the police but he wouldn’t.”

There was a sound at the door. The doctor had arrived, with a policeman just behind him wanting to know what had happened. The next half hour was a confusion of horror to Chris. Policemen coming and going silently, low murmured directions, fingerprints on the windowsill, footprints outside the window. A quick, low gasp of pain from the stricken man as he came back to consciousness under the doctor’s ministrations. Anxious waiting during the search for the bullet that had entered somewhere around the lungs. Bandages, subtle pungent odors filling the house, the swift arrival of a trained nurse from the hospital, a bed brought downstairs and his father moved to it. It all seemed like one awful nightmare that could not be true. His father! And yesterday everything had been so wonderful, and he had been so thankful that there was nothing dreadful in his life.