Dale let her cry for a while, and then she began to talk in low tones. “Poor little girl,” she whispered. “I’m not much of a substitute for a mother, am I? But you just cry there till you feel better. It will do you good to get all the cry out. Poor little girl!”
“Don’t pity me!” cringed the child. “I can’t bear to be pitied!”
“Oh, I’m sorry! You see, this is something just a little out of my line, and I don’t really know you so awfully well yet, you know, but you cuddle up close and perhaps I’ll learn.”
“Oh, you’re all right!” gasped the unhappy girl. “I’m just not used to being coddled. But—I guess—maybe—it isn’t so bad!” Corliss snuggled a little closer, and Dale’s arm held her close. How was this coming out, this sudden affectionate episode in the middle of the night with this strange child?
But she began to pat the soft young shoulder, and soon the shivering and trembling ceased and the hands she held grew warm. A few more minutes and the breath came softly, regularly. She thought the girl was asleep. Should she try to slip away now? No, that seemed too unfriendly, and if she should wake again, she might be even more frightened. No, she must see this night through. It might mean all the difference between winning or losing Corliss. Maybe this was why the Lord had let this unhappy experience come to them all, to bring them nearer to each other. For after all, they were kin.
Dale wondered if it was going to be possible for her to get to sleep again, so close to another. She had always slept alone. But she, too, was very weary, and it wasn’t long until she was asleep herself.
She awoke very early, and lying still because she did not wish to wake Corliss, she had the probable day spread out before her. How was she going to get through with it? Certainly she could not do it alone. She must have help from on high. And so lying there with the sleeping Corliss in her arms, she began to pray. And certainly Corliss had never been so near to prayer in all her rebellious young life. Would she have been frightened if she could have known how near she was to an open line to God?
As the morning sun stole in from the window, slanting across the gold of Corliss’s pretty curls, Dale glanced down at her and thought how pretty the girl was now, asleep, with the hard selfish lines erased in slumber and the little mouth without its lipstick, all sweet and innocent. What a pity the child couldn’t be trained to want to be sweet and pleasant and right. What a pity that in all probability, if her mother lived, she would have to grow up just like her mother. Was Aunt Blanche ever sweet and childlike herself? And would there be any possible way of her being changed? Of course God could do anything. He could change what He had made in the first place, although it wasn’t likely Aunt Blanche was born disagreeable, at least not any more than all humanity was full of sin and determined to go in selfish ways. But how could one ever get a person like Aunt Blanche, or even one like Corliss, to know their need of God and turn to Him? As far as she herself was concerned, it seemed an utterly thankless, useless task to attempt it. It would only bring scorn and derision upon her.
Well, a new day was at hand, and what was it to bring forth? There would have to be a visit to the hospital, of course, by them all. Judging Corliss by her nervous state last night, there was no telling what she would do. Perhaps she might even be capable of refusing to go to the hospital, which might make trouble with her mother, in case her mother was well enough to know. However, she would have to decide on that question when she came to it.
The first question that was nearest to Dale’s heart just then was whether there might be a letter in her new post office box for her and how she was going to manage to get it without being questioned about why she was going to the office. Really what she thought to do was to somehow manage to slip out of bed without waking Corliss, pick up her clothes, and make an escape to the bathroom to dress. Could she do that?
She gave a quick glance around the room to see just what she would need to take with her, for she must plan not to return until it was time for Corliss to wake up. She silently memorized the things she must remember to collect. The garments she had taken off the night before, her shoes, her brush and comb, her purse and keys. Then she focused on the task of getting away from Corliss without disturbing her. Almost finger by finger, muscle by muscle she moved and waited between each stealthy withdrawal, breathless, to see if she had stirred Corliss’s deep sleep. But the steady, quiet breathing went on, and at last she was free from the covers and outside of the bed, standing on the carpet, pulling the warm covers up over the girl. Then for an instant Corliss stretched slightly and drew a single sighing breath, as if the relaxing was a comfort.
Dale stood for several seconds, watching her cousin, thinking again how pretty and really sweet-looking she was in her sleep and how one could love her if she would be like that more often.
Then carefully she slipped across the room and let herself out, closing the door noiselessly. She slid into the bathroom, where with swift fingers she donned her garments, then hurried downstairs and went to the kitchen for a word with Hattie, who was just beginning to get things ready for breakfast.
“Don’t hurry, Hattie,” she whispered. “I don’t want them to wake up very early, for they can’t go to the hospital till visiting hours begin, and it will just be a restless time to get through. I’m running down to the store now to get a few things. I’ll be right back, but is there anything else you want besides the yeast you said you needed for hot biscuits tonight?”
“Why yes,” said Hattie. “We need mustard and vinegar and cinnamon and salt. Can you bring all those?”
Dale laughed. “Did you think I had grown weak, Hattie? Sure I can bring them, and a bit of fruit of some kind, too. Maybe some grapes. Well then, you carry on till I get back. If the cousins wake up, tell them I’ll be right back and then we’ll call up the hospital. It’s too early to do it now. But I don’t think they’ll wake before I’m back.”
So she hurried away and was rewarded by finding a nice thick letter in her new letter box. She went on to the store and got a few necessities and hurried back to the house.
It was all quiet there yet. Hattie reported that nothing had been heard from the two, who were likely accustomed to sleeping late, and Dale drew a happy sigh of relief and sat down by her desk to read her letter, remembering that she couldn’t be sure of long privacy and so must merely skim over it the first reading and read it slowly later when she was assured of more time. But as she opened the letter, she thrilled anew that he had written again so soon. Her love! Her letter! It was all so wonderful. So like a fairy story she used to dream when she was just a little girl.
My dearest:
I pause and wonder at myself for daring to write that, but you are mine, aren’t you? I rejoice at the thought. It thrills me anew every time I think of it.
And I have been sitting here in the train, flying along to afar and unknown destination, on my way to follow out orders, and as I sit here alone I think of you and wonder what it would be like if you were sitting by my side. How wonderful it would be! And so I try to kid myself that you are here. I turn and look down at where you might be and smile at you, just vaguely. If any were noticing me they might wonder, but no one in the car would mind. In fact, if they knew they would probably all understand. For every fellow in this car has likely left some beloved one behind him.
And when I think of that and the way I used to feel, looking enviously at the other fellows with snapshots and photographs at which they took furtive glances, I feel triumphant. I used to envy all the other boys, and even those who only had sisters or just friends, and I hadn’t even a mother left.
But now I’m filled with joy. For I have a girl who beats them all, I’m sure. A girl so beautiful that I wonder any of them should possibly have left her free for me. They just never met her, that’s all, I’m quite sure.
Did I ever take time to tell you how beautiful you are to me? You thought perhaps that I never noticed the little details about you, but I did. I was just so pressed f
or time on the important things that had to be said before we parted that I saved it up to write about instead. You may think I would have forgotten, but I haven’t. I can close my eyes and see your exquisite face, even the very rose tint of your cheeks and your lips and chin. The soft curves of your sweet lips, the lines they make when you speak and when you smile. Even without closing my eyes I can bring them all back to mind, so that you seem to be conversing with me, smiling at me. I can see you as you were sitting against the hemlock green, the sunlight shining on your hair. It is all dear, very dear. I can see the little curl at the back of your sweet white neck when you stooped over to pick up the little beechnuts that fell at your feet from the beech tree over at our left. I can see the very color of your dress. My girl, who says she loves me and doesn’t mind that we haven’t known each other very long, because somehow God has introduced us and made us to be sure about one another. After all, that is the main thing, isn’t it? That we both know and love our Savior? And when I think of that I find it again so very wonderful that I should have walked into that social center and found you.
I wasn’t looking for you then. I wouldn’t have gone to anything with the word social belonging to it to find my dream girl. Because I had found so many of the girls in such places were just pretty, dressed-up dolls, and that wasn’t the kind of girl I wanted. Not if I never had one, did I want a fashionable doll, no matter how pretty she was.
But now that I have found her, I defy anyone to find a more beautiful girl anywhere, than my dear girl. And I want you to know it. I’m sure that wherever I go, and however many girls I see, whether beautiful or sensible or very lovely, none will ever look or seem to be as lovely as my girl.
And so I have described to you the girl I love. The girl, who one day, please God, is to be my wife.
There was more of the same sort, deeply sweet and earnest. Wonderful talk that Dale had never dreamed of having written to her. Precious sentences that seemed almost as if they must have been formed in heaven. At least formed by one to whom heaven was very real.
And when she had finished reading she folded the letter tenderly and slipped it safely inside the blouse she was wearing. Such letters were not for the public eye. Precious, precious!
And then she heard footsteps upstairs and realized that her day had begun. There was only time to breathe a prayer for help before Powelton came down, and she could hear Corliss hurrying around to follow him.
So she rose and went out to the kitchen to tell Hattie she might as well get ready to serve breakfast.
Chapter 13
The young people came down to the dining room very much subdued in manner and sat down at the table quietly, as those might do who had met with a great awakening of some sort.
Corliss even flung a little shadow of a half smile toward Dale, like pale sunshine, and Dale felt again that wonder that the girl could change so overnight. Was it because she remembered her fright of last night? Was she still afraid of that dream of hers?
But Dale sat down cheerily smiling and said, “Good morning,” as if she were any hostess.
It certainly was astonishing to see how quietly they ate their breakfast. Though they did not seem as ravenous as they had been before. But there was no complaining, no snarling, no demands for food not on the table. Hattie looked at them wonderingly and even smiled at Dale when she asked for more cream.
“Have you called the hospital yet?” asked Corliss shrinkingly.
“No, I thought we better wait till the doctor was there. Then we could really find out how things are going. But perhaps I might call now and get the nurse’s viewpoint.”
“Yes,” said the boy suddenly. “It seems an awful long time since last night.”
“Yes,” said Dale, springing up. “I’ll call right away.”
They followed her to the telephone and waited solemnly for the nurse to be called. But when the nurse came there wasn’t much new. She said Mrs. Huntley had spent a fairly comfortable night, but she would not be able to give them any definite news until the doctor arrived. Yes, they might come at any time to see her now, but about eleven o’clock would be best. She had, of course, suffered a good deal of shock from the accident, and they must be prepared to realize that she would not as yet be very responsive. She might not even recognize who they were.
They turned solemnly away from the phone, and Corliss went over to the window and stared out unseeingly. Dale, looking at her furtively, saw her wiping away big tears and went over to put a comforting arm around her.
“Come on, dear,” she said pleasantly, “don’t let’s worry yet. We’ll have to expect she won’t be quite herself yet, but the nurse seemed to feel she was doing as well as could be expected. So let’s run up and get the beds made. That will help to keep our minds busy, and then we’ll get ready to start for the hospital.”
The boy stared at her in a troubled way. “Is there anything you’d like me to do, Dale?” he asked unexpectedly. “I don’t suppose I’d be much good making beds.”
“Why yes,” said Dale brightly, “you can wind the clocks, one in the upper hall and one in the living room. And there’s a door upstairs that needs a drop of oil. It squeaks horribly. Hattie will tell you where the oil can is. It would be good to have all squeaks oiled up before your mother comes home. We don’t want anything around to make her nervous.”
“Oh,” said Corliss brightly, “will she be coming back here, do you think?”
“Why, of course,” said Dale, trying to make her voice sound cheerful over the thought. “That is, of course I can’t be sure what she will want to do, when she is able to get around again, but I should think this would be her natural haven while she is recovering, and we want to be ready for her.”
“Then you think she is really going to recover?” asked the son anxiously.
“Why, I should think so, from what the doctor said last night,” said Dale. “He didn’t seem to feel there were going to be any serious complications. But of course we can tell better after we have seen him again this morning.”
Somehow Powelton seemed to have taken on a new character—silent, subdued, solemn, and a bit anxious. Dale rather liked him in his new role. He seemed almost attractive now.
Upstairs Dale and Corliss made lively work of putting the rooms in order, one on each side of a bed, smoothing the covers neatly. Corliss seemed never to have tried bed making before and said she thought it was almost fun.
Then they got themselves ready and started for the hospital.
Dale could not help pitying Corliss as she glanced at her while they went up in the elevator. Corliss’s hands were gripped viselike and stuffed so tightly into her chic little suit jacket that the knuckles showed through the material. Poor child. She was frightened again. It wasn’t just fear for her mother’s safety, was it? She had never seemed really to love her mother, although that mother had always given her everything she wanted. But it seemed more a fear of possibilities, gruesome things, like suffering and death.
Corliss’s lips were closed tight, her teeth even shut tight, making her soft little mouth into something firm and hard. And her eyes were frightened eyes.
She slipped over to stand by the girl and slid her hand inside one firmly stiff young arm. “Don’t worry, Corliss,” she whispered. “It’s going to be all right pretty soon, I’m sure.”
Corliss gave her a troubled searching look. “Are you sure, Dale?” she asked fearsomely.
“Yes, I’m quite sure,” said Dale reassuringly.
Then they were at the doorway of that long room filled with beds, and sick or dying people in those beds. Corliss gripped Dale’s hand as they walked down to her mother’s bed, gripped it so hard that it hurt, but her pursed lips let out no sound. Corliss had really grown a lot in the last twenty-four hours.
The sick woman lay, almost as yesterday, not seeming to notice anything, until the nurse came up.
“Well, here are your family come to see you, Mrs. Huntley,” the nurse said in a pleasant to
ne, and the white image in the bed turned her eyes toward them and looked them over oddly as if they were strangers.
The sick woman’s quick, bright eyes surveyed them one at a time, and there came no welcoming look, nothing but critical survey.
“You haven’t got your tie put on right, Powelton,” was the first thing she said.
The boy’s hand went quickly to his tie, but his face got painfully red, and he cast a quick deploring look around to see if the nurse or anyone else had noticed his mother.
“Do you feel any better, Mother?” asked Corliss in an unsteady little voice, so evidently trying to say the right thing, as if she must have thought it out beforehand.
“Better?” snapped her mother. “Why should I feel better? Have I got any reason to feel better? Stuck away in this awful white room? My arm all tied up, my face all tied up, and I can’t do anything about it. What does it all mean, Powelton? Why have you let them do this to me? After all, I’m your mother, you know.”
The boy got white around his mouth and, stooping, tried to explain in a gentle voice that surprised Dale: “Mother, there was an accident, and you got hit by an automobile. They had to bring you to the hospital, and they are going to make you get well. You just be patient, and you’ll feel better pretty soon.”
“Oh, you think you can lecture me, do you? Why, you’re nothing but a child! I guess I know when to be patient, and this isn’t the time for that. I’ll have them know I won’t be kept in this hospital ward. I can afford to pay for a private room if I’m really sick, but I don’t think I am. They have just got me all tied up this way to amuse themselves, those doctors and nurses.”
She chattered on meaninglessly, showing that she was not altogether herself, and then her eyes caught a glimpse of Dale, and she fixed her with a hateful glance. “Oh, so you thought you had to come, too, did you? Well, you can go! I don’t want you hanging around and gloating over me. And if you do anything unkind to my children before I get back I’ll see that you pay for it, do you understand?”