Treasured Brides Collection (34 page)

About ten o’clock, as he was passing the station, he spied Betty Zane descending from the train with her suitcase, home for Thanksgiving from her coeducational college.

“Hello, Chris!” She waved to him. “Can’t you take me home in your lovely new car?”

There seemed to Chris’s sensitive ear a mocking tone in Betty’s voice. Betty Zane knew, of course, that he had no new car now. She must have been thoroughly informed of all that happened since she went away. If no one else would tell her, her sharp-eyed kid sister Gwendolen would have done so. Betty was just trying to make him confess that he had no car. Betty was like that. She used to pin a butterfly to her desktop in school and enjoy watching the poor fluttering wings. Chris hardened his heart, remembering Gilda’s freezing bow of yesterday, and he gave Betty a very good male imitation of it, and answered quite rudely for a boy who had been brought up to be courteous, “Nothing doing. I’m out of business. There’s the taxi.”

Betty stared at him and tossed her head, then turned her back upon him, and Chris moved on out of her sight, all the more out of sorts with the world because he knew that he ought to be ashamed of himself.

So he tramped on, bitter and pessimistic. Grand day this, he ought to be ashamed of himself.

Oh, of course, he was glad and thankful that Dad was getting better and Mother wasn’t breaking under the strain. But even that had a sting in it, for what prospect had Dad but bitterness and disappointment? It would be better, perhaps, if they all died together rather than to live on and see such a difference between their former life and now. How could they ever be happy again? Dad would probably find that men in the business world could be just as offish as the young folks. Dad wouldn’t keep that cheery, exalted look long, after he got back into business life again. He would find he was up against it. It was all well enough to be so relieved that his good name was to be cleared and no one have to suffer for the bank’s troubles, but just wait till the excitement blew over. Dad would suffer. Just suffer! And so would Mother, and it was up to him to do something about it. He’d simply
got
to get a real paying job.

Then he let himself into the house to find that his father and mother were rejoicing, yes, actually rejoicing that the beautiful family car they had had for only about four months, and which had been the delight of their hearts, had been sold at a good price. What did they care how much the old thing brought since they had to give it up?

Father had family prayers as usual, reading a chapter about the goodness of the Lord and actually thanking God that the car had been so well sold! Well, it was just inexplicable, that was all. For his own part, he felt so rebellious at the going of their car that he could hardly make his knees bend to kneel down with them. Thank God for that? There wasn’t a chance!

As they rose from their knees after prayer, Mr. Walton said, with a ring to his voice that his son could not understand, “I heard today of a possible buyer for the house. If that be so, we may soon be on an honest basis.”

“Honest?” burst out Chris.

“Yes, Son,” said the father, turning wise, kind eyes toward him. “I shrink every day from coming out of a house like this when many depositors in the bank that was under my care, people who trusted in me to take care of their all, are almost without food or shelter.”

And Chris perceived that his father and mother were bent on one thing, the paying of their debts, and that possessions meant nothing to them so long as a single creditor had anything against them.

He opened his lips to ask, “But where shall we go, Dad, if the house is sold?” And then was ashamed in the face of such nobility as both parents were displaying, and closed them again.

So, the house was going, too! That was another thing to dread! It was like standing on a tiny speck of land in the midst of a wild, whirling ocean and seeing the land crumble away under one’s feet bit by bit. The car had gone today, college yesterday; the house where he was born would perhaps go tomorrow. And where were all the friends of the years? Would any of them stick, or would they melt away, one by one, till they stood alone in an alien world?

I
t was not until the week after Thanksgiving that the buyer came to look at the house. Chris had almost begun to hope that he was a myth and no one would come.

He was a big pompous man who murdered the King’s English and wore an enormous diamond on his fat little finger, as if it were a headlight.

He had a large family of untamed children who swarmed cheerfully, boldly through the house, fingering Mrs. Walton’s embroideries, staring into her private room rudely, yelling at one another from one story to another, and even attempting to be what Chris called “fresh” with him, the son of the house.

They freely discussed the furnishings; laughed at some things as funny and old fashioned; were frankly curious about some of the rich tapestries, which the Walton’s had counted among their finer treasures; asked questions without stint, gaining new viewpoints, one could see, with every icy answer that Chris made as he showed them over the rooms at his mother’s request. As he progressed from cellar to attic, his rage and indignation increased. Why did they have to stand this sort of thing from these low-down, common people? It was bad enough to have them buy the house without this torture. If they wanted it, let them take it and keep still. If they didn’t, let them go away! He had no patience with his mother’s smiling sweetness, her gentle courtesy. He knew it was hard for her as for him. Yet she kept her strength and sweetness. How could she? These insufferable people! They were fairly insulting and acted as if the house already belonged to them. One daughter with too much lipstick said she hoped he would call on her often. It would be nice and cozy having someone come who knew the house well, and he’d likely be homesick and would enjoy coming back. He looked at her coldly and said nothing. He waded deep into the waters of humiliation that day.

It was rumored that the father was a bootlegger and had made an enormous sum of money, which he didn’t know how to spend. He was voluble in his delight in the house, offered to buy the pictures and hangings and furniture, even the precious works of art Dad and Mother had picked up abroad. They wanted the house just as quick as the Waltons could possibly get out. They made no question about the price that was asked. They even offered to pay a bonus if they could have possession in two weeks.

Chris, with a furl of disgust on his lip, looked to his father for a quick refusal, but when he saw the relief on that pale, beloved face, and realized that what his father wanted more than anything in life was a speedy release from indebtedness, a quick relief from his depositors, he closed his lips hard on the protest he was about to make. After all, of course it was a good price the man was paying, and a bonus would help, too. He must remember they were paupers and had no right to pick and choose.

Oh, those were bitter days for Chris, tramping the streets all day, sometimes far into the evening, sometimes walking miles into the country to reach a man who had no influence.

Then came the question of where they would go. Chris faced it bitterly, thinking of lodging houses or a boardinghouse or a hotel apartment. But the next night, when he came home and heard the plan his mother and father had agreed upon, he thought his cup of humiliation was full.

There was a little run-down house on a back street whose kitchen windows looked out upon the railroad, a street where the washerwoman lived. It had recently come into Mr. Walton’s hands through the death of a man without a family, who owed him a debt of long standing and had given him a judgment note against the house. Chris’s family was actually planning to move into it next week and vacate their noble family mansion for the bootlegger’s family. Chris sat down in the nearest chair, aghast.

Elise was there, having been summoned home from her aunt’s, where she had been while her father was ill. Elise, in her pretty blue dress, with her fair curling hair and her lovely, big blue eyes. Somehow, she had never looked so lovely before to her brother’s eyes as when he thought of her in Sullivan Street living next to their washerwoman!

Before he could shut his lips, so carefully guarded during all the weeks when his father lay ill, one awful sentence about Elise and Mother living next to the washerwoman slipped out, and Chris saw the dart of pain in his father’s eyes at once.

“But,” said Elise cheerfully, “she won’t have to be our washerwoman anymore, you know, Chrissy, because, as I understand it, we can’t afford any washerwoman. We have to do the wash ourselves. I think it’ll be fun.” She ended with a grin of good sportsmanship.

“I know!” sighed the father, with a piteous look around upon them all.

“Nothing of the kind!” said Elise. “Mother and I are going to enjoy it, aren’t we, Mother? It’ll be the chance of a lifetime for me to learn to be a good cook and housekeeper. Forget it, Daddy! This is only a game. Get into position and smile!”

And her father, in spite of his heavy heart, smiled at the pretty girl.

“Maybe it’ll be for a little while,” he murmured, trying to make his voice sound hopeful.

That night Chris bought a paper and spent two hours studying the want ads and marking them. As he finally got into his bed, he thought of the fellow who had preached that fool sermon the last time he went to church, and wished he could wring his neck. A lot he could be thankful for the things that were handed out to him now, couldn’t he? Mother and Elise in a place like Sullivan Street! Good night! He’d
got to
get a
job
!

He didn’t call it a position anymore; it was just a plain job. He felt he might even be a little thankful if he could just have a few dollars coming in to help out. No creditor was going to get his money, not till he was making enough to put Mother in a comfortable position anyway.

The next morning he started out early and answered three advertisements, but found a long line of discouraged-looking applicants waiting for each. While he was waiting for a fourth place, which had named a time for applicants to arrive, he stepped around to Sullivan Street and found it even worse than he feared.

The house was whitewashed, or had been once, but there was scarcely enough of the original to identify it. It looked, through dirty windows, to have but five rooms and a lean-to kitchen. There were four dirty, limp cords fastened from stakes in the hard ground to the top of the window sash, and twined about them were four dead, dried ghosts of morning glory vines, waving disconsolately about in the chill November breeze. They typified to Chris their family of four Waltons, come down to Sullivan Street from the glory of the ancestral home that had been theirs.

The dead leaves waved and rasped emptily, back and forth against the broken windowpane, making a sad little minor refrain of weird music that sent a lump into the boy’s throat. He dashed around the narrow path to the backyard, a mere patch, mostly paved with ashes, and saw a tattered clothesline stretched from the corner of the house to the fence and back, and fancied his beautiful young sister hanging up the family wash thereon in a chilly wind like this. The tears stung into his eyes. He hurried off and tried to forget it all, wishing for a genie and a magic lamp with which to bring an immediate fortune for the family. He went on to the next place on his list, was told they wanted only college graduates, and turned with more bitterness in his heart.

Thankful for a thing like that? Not he. Where was his father’s God, anyway? Had there really been any God at all, he wondered as he buttoned his coat closer and pulled his hat over his smarting eyes. He had a feeling at the pit of his stomach, like his memory of the day he first discovered there wasn’t any real Santa Claus.

What was going to happen next, he wondered desperately, and pulled his hat further down over his eyes.

The next few days were soul-trying ones for Chris, beyond anything he had ever experienced before. He was appalled to find his mother and father were both determined to move to the Sullivan Street house. Even the first desolate glimpse of the house had not discouraged them.

He had watched them as they came in sight, walking, the first time they had been out since the car was sold, walking down the plebian street like common folks. Chris raged inwardly and followed behind them, dropping his eyes, hoping they would not meet anyone who knew them.

“I’m afraid it looks pretty hopeless,” sighed the father. “If I just didn’t remember what wonders you can work with very simple things, I would give up in despair. But we could be happy there for a little while, couldn’t we, Mary? Perhaps something will change, and we can get into a better neighborhood soon.”

“We can be very happy!” said Mary with a toss of her head and that bright smile she had worn ever since her elderly lover had begun to get well.

“A little paint will work wonders,” she said. “We can save on butter and things, and buy paint, and Chris and I can put it on. I’ll do the inside and Chris will do the outside. There’s a pair of nice new overalls I bought for the chauffeur and never gave him. They will do for Chris, and we have a ladder, haven’t we?”

Whether it was the vision of himself in overalls on a ladder painting that Sullivan Street house, or the rainbow cheerfulness of his mother’s voice, one or the other, or both, brought sudden tears to Chris’s eyes. And he had to duck his head down quickly and pretend to be trying to pick up a round bit of tin that looked like a dime from the sidewalk, lest his father should see him crying. Tears! In a fellow old enough to be in college! Why, he hadn’t felt like crying since he was a baby and licked all the boys in the street, and then found his nose was bleeding and one eye wouldn’t open.

Mother hadn’t been discouraged with the inside of the house, either. She had said how it was good they had never sold that coal range in the cellar at home. Nobody would want to buy that. They were out of date now. But it would practically heat the house in mild weather, and a coal range was wonderful to cook with. You could broil a beefsteak to perfection over hot coals that would make a gas-broiled steak blush with shame. Cheerily like that she talked along, suggesting the old red sofa from the attic—the one that had been her mother’s and she had never been willing to part with, even though it was shabby and old-fashioned—would fit in between the side windows that looked out on the alley. She recalled, also, a little stand and a strange old pine desk that had been her father’s and a few over-stuffed chairs. It had been mere tender memories that had kept them in the attic instead of sending them to the dump. But now, why! She looked almost glad with that tender touch in her eyes, as if she were actually pleased that they were to come into their own again. Her son stood by the dusty window and looked out, marveling.