Treasured Brides Collection (35 page)

And the very next morning, he came home and found his mother washing that dirty window, out of which he had looked! He had come home for lunch, and the one maid who was staying with them till they were moved said lunch was ready but his mother had gone down to “the other house.” The words gave his heart a wrench. As if that dump down there could be called a house! “The
other
house!” He had followed hotfoot after her and found her washing the windows, her sleeves rolled up, an old sweater pinned around her closely, and a stray lock of wavy gray hair fallen into her eyes, her face as eager as a child’s. The wife of the president of the Fidelity Bank washing windows in late November in a cold house!

He took her home summarily, walking so fast she was almost out of breath and scolding her all the way, but she only smiled. After that, he went back after lunch and finished the rest of the windows himself. He didn’t do them very well. They had streaks all over them, but at least the dust was off. Then he looked around in dismay at the work still to be done. Walls and floors had to be swept and washed. Dirty paper, dirty paint! Ugh! How could his mother bear it? It was harder to wash a window than to play an afternoon’s game of football. He was trembling from head to foot. After serious consideration he went home and collected some of his treasures—his camera, several tennis rackets, and a set of golf clubs—and took them to a second-hand place and sold them. Then he hunted up a man who did whitewashing and got him to promise to scrub the whole house early the next morning.

After that Chris abandoned his vain search for a job until the moving should be over. Chris and Elise went to work, Chris with a frown on his handsome face, and Elise with laughter and cheerful songs, jokes, and an indefatigable ability to sit down on the stairs anywhere and giggle at his efforts. Often he got furiously angry at her. He found it impossible to treat this whole catastrophe of the family like a joke. It was serious business, the wreck of their whole lives, and here were Mother and Elise laughing as if they enjoyed it. They were just alike.

Then he would glance at his father, sitting back, relaxed, smiling in his invalid chair, not allowed to lift his finger, and looking very peaceful. What did Dad have that kept him so serene? He was satisfied that Dad was deeply hurt that all these things had to be, cut to the heart that his wife and daughter must work so hard, that his son could not go to college, yet the lines of care were not nearly so deep on his forehead as they had been some weeks before the bank closed its doors. Was it just that he was relieved to be doing his best toward paying the depositors? No, it must be something more than that. And in spite of himself, he felt a respect for his father’s faith. It might have no foundation, but whether it did or not, it was beautiful to see such faith. He found a hungry feeling in his own heart to have something like that to stay his furious young heart upon. Yet he told himself he never could believe in a God who would do such things to trusting people, and he readily hardened his heart when he heard his father pray, always beginning his petition with thanksgiving. He simply could not understand it. Elise was only a child, of course. She enjoyed every new thing that came along, even moving into a little seven-by-nine dinky house on a back street, like a child playing dollhouse. His mother was merely glad that his father was up and around again. Neither Mother nor Elise had any sense of what it was going to mean, this terrible change in the family fortunes. But his father understood, and yet he bore up. It was inexplicable.

Yet somehow, in spite of all predictions, when the paint and paper were in place and the few old sticks of furniture disposed about, that had been saved from the wholesale carnage, even the old golden oak sideboard and dining room table and chairs from the servant’s dining room took on an air of comfort. Chris couldn’t explain it.

There were draperies, too, that Chris remembered in the nursery when he was a kid, cheery linens with tie backs, long since packed in an old chest in the attic and only pulled out for home charades when they needed costumes. But now they seemed to make, out of the little shanty on Sullivan Street, a cozy nest where comfort might be found in the midst of a desolated world.

It was that first night that they had supper in the new home.

Elise and her mother, in plain cotton dresses, were in the speck of a kitchen getting supper, and a savory smell was already beginning to pervade the house. The rooms were too near neighbors to have any secrets from the parlor of what was going on in the kitchen. Chris knew there was one of those savory stews he always liked so much, and he was hungry for it already. Anna, the departing maid, had cooked it that morning in the old house before the last load of things they were allowing themselves to call their own from the attic came over. Chris knew that Anna had also made doughnuts and a couple of mince pies on the sly between other duties. He had brought over the stone jar containing the doughnuts and the basket with the mince pies early that morning that Anna’s surprise for his mother might be complete. Oh, there would be a good supper.

Elise was setting the table, humming a cheerful little tune that never gave hint of the tears that were so near the surface. His father was sitting beside the old attic table in the faded old Morris chair with his feet on the extension, reading the evening paper and resting as happily as if he had been in his gorgeous leather chair in his own library, with the carved desk beside him and an alabaster lamp of old world design to light him. Didn’t his father know the difference? Didn’t he care at all?

And now came a call for Chris to go after a loaf of bread.

“It’s only a couple of blocks or so up the avenue, Chris,” said Elise cheerfully, as she saw a frown gather on her brother’s brow. “I’d go but Mother needs me. Dinner’ll be quite ready when you come back. It’s one of those grocery stores, the second block on the right. I bought a cake of soap there yesterday. You can’t miss it.”

“Why? Will I see the rest of the box of soap out watching for me?” asked the brother ill-naturedly as he rose and slung his cap on the back of his head. “I thought you got an
A
in English. Why would the fact that you bought a cake of soap there yesterday keep me from missing the store?”

“Quit your kidding and hurry, please. I’m making popovers and they need to be eaten at once when they’re done.”

Chris sauntered out into the chilly evening air, perversely refusing to wear his overcoat and feeling as if he had been exiled into an evil world again. The cheeriness of the little house that had half angered him only made the outside world seem the more unfriendly. How dark Sullivan Street was. The city ought to put in more lights. He hurried along angrily. It seemed to him as if he had scarcely been anything but angry since the bank had closed.

He found the grocery store, bright and full of brisk business. Everybody was there inspecting trays of vegetables, buying great creamy slices of cheese, prunes, crackers, coffee, flour, and potatoes. One woman had a long list and a pile of groceries on the counter before her, and now she turned toward the meat side of the store and began to select pork chops.

Chris looked around curiously. It was almost the first time since he was a little boy that he had been in such a store. There hadn’t been any need. Those things were always well ordered by a capable maid over the telephone. Not even his mother had had to mingle with the common herd this way. The store was bright and cheery.

Everything looked clean and appetizing. There were delightful smells of oranges, celery, and coffee in the air. But no one was paying the slightest attention to him. They gave him a curious sensation. He was used to deference everywhere. Well, of course, no one knew him in this section of the city, and there was relief in that. How interested these people were, as if they were selecting a new car or a Christmas present. What did they care which bunch of carrots they bought? Cranberries! How pretty they were in bulk.

But he must get waited on quickly. He didn’t want to stay here all night. He approached a salesman with a lady who was accumulating a great pile of things on the counter. She had come to a pause and was trying to think up something else, gazing up at the top shelves of cereals. He would just cut in on her and get his bread and get out.

But the salesman looked up with a courteous smile.

“Sorry, I’m busy just now. You’ll have ta wait your turn. Somebody’ll be free in a minute, I guess.”

Chris stepped back haughtily and felt as if he had been slapped in the face. So, there were rules to this grocery store game. Everyone was just as good as everyone else. The dark color flung up in his face, and he was about to leave, when he suddenly remembered his recent lowly estate and retreated into the background.

Pinned in a corner by a bunch of brooms and a stack of bargain cans of peaches, watching sullenly for a free salesman, he suddenly heard low-spoken words behind him, not meant for his ear for sure.

“That’s him,” said an uncultured voice. “He’s the old man’s son. Some baby! Yep, right behind ya. Nope, he dunno me. I was in grammar when he was in high. He wouldn’t know me from a bag a beans. And anyhow, he wouldn’t. He always was an awful snob! My goodness, no. I wouldn’t speak to him. I wouldn’t wantta be snubbed. I hate snobs!”

Cold, angry prickles went down Chris’s back, and he felt the very back of his neck grow red. He could hardly come out of his fury when his courteous salesman wheeled upon him at last with a free and easy, “Now, sir, what can I get for you?”

His voice sounded unnatural as he asked for the bread. He didn’t remember ever to have bought a loaf of bread before. He wondered if there was a certain way of asking for it. He glowered after the two whispering flappers who had been behind him. They were over at the meat counter now, giggling and chewing gum. The one with the red hair and freckles was vaguely familiar as a kid who once tried to run through a football game in the schoolyard and made all the fellows furious. She wasn’t any account, of course, but was that the way all of the school had regarded him, as a snob?

Then his humiliation would be the greater. They would gloat over his loss of caste. He had never regarded himself anything but a self-respecting son of his father. A snob was one who looked down on most other people. Well, perhaps he had, but he had always supposed they didn’t know it. He had rather regarded it as a breach of etiquette to let others know that they were despised. He must have failed sadly.

He had his loaf of bread at last and went with the check and his money to the cash window, hastily, to get out before he might meet those two disrespectable flappers and have to recognize them as fellow buyers.

He handed in his check at the little glass window and was suddenly aware of a pair of friendly eyes looking up at him and a shyly hesitant smile.

N
atalie Halsey! Here? Her pale little friendly face seemed like a pleasant oasis in this strange, unfriendly environment.

“Hello!” he said, almost eagerly, his face lighting up with a strange relief. “Is this where you hang out? I didn’t know it was in this neighborhood.”

“Yes.” She smiled again. “This is where you picked me up in your new car the other day and took me home. I’ll always be grateful to you for getting me home so soon. Mother had had a bad spell just before I left, and she was getting very nervous about my being gone so long. She might have had a relapse if I had been much longer.”

“You don’t say!” he said, startled, half pleased to be commended for something he had done after the unpleasant whisper he had just heard behind his back.

“You are home from college for the Thanksgiving holiday, aren’t you? Or—that would be over wouldn’t it? It must be a weekend,” she commented in a momentary lull from her store activities.

“No such luck!” he said, a dark cloud of remembrance passing over his face. “I didn’t get to go to college.”

“Oh,” said Natalie sympathetically. “Someone said you were at home, but I wasn’t sure. You—are working somewhere? But you’ll enjoy that, too. It’s nice to be doing something real.”

He looked down at the sweet, childish face, a little weary, a little blue under the eyes, and felt a sudden tenderness for her, and anger at himself. She was doing something real. She had found it for herself, and he, Chris Walton, couldn’t get
anything
. Not
anything
!

“I wish I were,” he said wistfully. “I’ve walked all over this little old town and nobody wants me.”

There was a strange humility about his words. Natalie looked up in wonder.

“You don’t know of a good job, do you?” he added wistfully.

“Oh”—breathed Natalie, her eyes thoughtfully watching him. “Yes, I do. But—you wouldn’t want such a job. I’m sure you wouldn’t.”

“Try me and see,” said Chris, with sudden determination as he thought of the little cozy room shut in by the curtains and his beautiful mother in that tiny kitchen getting supper. He must somehow make good. He was desperate.

“But,” said Natalie, growing a bit red and confused, “it’s only—a—it’s not in keeping with your—position,” she ended bravely.

“My position, lady,” said Chris, with a grim humility upon his face that made his chin look rugged and firm, “is away down at the foot of the ladder. I’m groveling at present, if you know what that means. If you have any such jobs as that, please lead me to them.”

A woman snapped in between them with a five dollar bill to be changed, and two others followed with their checks to be paid, and Chris had to step back for a moment.

He noted Natalie’s pale fingers as they flew among the dirty bills, checking off dimes and nickels, and wondered that he had never noticed before how delicate and fragile she was. Then the three women moved on and there was another moment’s cessation.

“It’s only right here, in this store.” She eyed him anxiously. “You wouldn’t want to work here, would you, in a plain, common place like this?”

“I don’t know why not,” said Chris gamely, swallowing hard at a surprised lump in his throat. “Is there a chance here, do you think? I must get a job.”