With no experience at all to judge by, the child knew there must be something terribly wrong. She sprang to the window and threw up the shades. The westering sun sent a cruel revealing light across the white face of the mother, slumped against the old couch, white and still, the telephone rolling on the floor beside her with abandoned air.
Betty Lou clasped her mother in her arms, put hot little lips against the mother’s cold ones, rained hot frightened tears on the white face, found the cold white hands and brought them to her warm little breast in anguish, but the mother slipped back heavily from the embrace, and she did not open her eyes, though the child fancied she heard the least little semblance of a whispered moan as her mother slid further down on the floor with her head pillowed on the old rug.
Betty Lou remembered that when Willa Brower had fainted in school once they laid her down and threw water in her face. With her heart beating wildly she ran to the kitchen and brought some water, dashing it in her mother’s face and wetting the cold lips with a drop on her fingertips, but the mother continued to lie white and still.
The baby was crying lustily by this time, but Betty Lou did not hear him. What were silver quarters now when Mother looked like this? She must do something for Mother! She must call somebody!
She reached for the disabled telephone and tried to call the operator, but the receiver had been down so long that the operator had concluded it was not worthwhile to notice. Wildly she hung up the receiver and rushed toward the door. Perhaps there would be somebody in the street!
But the street shone back hot and empty, not even a child in sight. What should she do? They gave people something to smell when they fainted, but Betty Lou was not sure what it was? Would her little bottle of Christmas perfumery do? She rushed up to her bureau and came down with it, struggling with the cork as she ran. Dashing the teaspoonful of treasured perfume on a handkerchief she held it to her mother’s nose. She retrieved the palm leaf from the front porch and fanned violently, and then, remembering how cold her mother’s face had been, she seized her hands and began to chafe them between her own hot dry little palms. And while she worked she remembered that it had been some terrible message over the telephone that had been the cause of this sudden collapse of her mother, and by degrees the words her mother had spoken came back to her, “Who? Where? What hospital?”
Then somebody they loved had been hurt or was very ill and had been taken to the hospital. Was it Father or Tom? Perhaps Tom had been run over or been hurt in an automobile accident. He went down with Father to the office in the morning and he had not come back. Perhaps he had got the car from the repair shop and gone somewhere. Maybe it was smashed up and Tom with it! Such awful things were happening all the time. A little boy in the next block last week, a woman across the street just day before yesterday, they didn’t know yet how badly she was hurt.
Or perhaps it was Father! Perhaps he had been worse hurt than they thought. Perhaps Tom had had the car and he had tried to come home by trolley. There was a terrible crossing not far from the office where he worked!
Oh, it couldn’t be Jane, could it? Dear Jane, so straight and pretty. Oh, if Jane were sick away off there on the mountain, what would they do? Or maybe she had been killed somehow—drowned perhaps in that lake where she swam every day!
Betty Lou’s childish heart sobbed great dry sobs as she worked over her mother.
Out in the kitchen the teakettle, which had been put on a few minutes before to scald the tomatoes so they would skin easily, set up a little sudden song. That was an idea! Perhaps a cup of tea would help Mother, since she was cold.
She hurried to the kitchen, put a pinch of tea in the strainer, and poured hot water over it. In a moment she was back kneeling at her mother’s side with the steaming cup and a teaspoon. She put the spoon to her mother’s lips and pried it between her teeth, and she had the reward of seeing the drops of tea swallowed. Eagerly she filled the spoon again, and a few more drops went down, and presently the lips stirred, and Mother’s eyes opened. Betty Lou almost dropped the cup in her joy.
“What’s all this racket?” said Tom’s voice suddenly, very cross. He had come in the back way out of the bright sunlight from the tiny garage at the rear and appeared blinking in the doorway. “What’s that little pest doing out on our porch I’d like to know, yelling his head off? Isn’t it bad enough to have that brat live next door without his being parked on our doorstep?”
“Shhh!” said Betty Lou softly, looking up from her mother’s white face, “Mother’s sick!”
“Sick?” said Tom aghast, coming quickly to her side and kneeling down. “What’s th’ matter, Mumsie?” Tom’s voice was suddenly very tender.
Betty Lou put another spoonful of tea to her mother’s lips, which opened gratefully now to receive it, and then Mother opened her eyes wearily and looked first at Betty Lou and then at Tom, and tried to give a faint smile, but seemed too tired to finish it and closed her eyes again.
“What happened?” asked Tom, feeling anxiously for the feeble pulse.
“Somebody telephoned,” said Betty Lou anxiously, “I don’t know what. I was out on the porch. I heard Mother say, ‘Who? Where? What hospital?’ and then I heard her fall.”
“Hospital!” said Tom in alarm, and he straightened up and mopped his hot young brow with his handkerchief.
Mother’s eyes fluttered open and her lips murmured a word, scarcely formed, “Father!” she said, “Father!” and closed her eyes again as if the effort had been too great.
Betty Lou snuggled closer to her mother, relieved that she had spoken, even while a new anxiety gripped her child’s heart. She plied her mother’s lips with another spoonful of the tea.
“We must get her up on the couch,” said Tom, and stopping lifted her in his strong young arms, laying her gently against the cushions. Betty Lou stood by with her cup of tea.
“Did you call the doctor?” asked Tom.
“I tried, but the phone wouldn’t work. It had been off the receiver a long time, I guess. It fell with her.”
Tom went to the telephone and called a number. The sharp staccato of the instrument mingled with the furious roars of the neglected infant on the porch, whose stentorian efforts seemed to increase with each moment.
“Go strangle that kid, can’t you, Lou?” said her brother. “I can’t hear a thing.”
But Betty Lou was feeding her mother teaspoons of tea, and her mother was reviving visibly now with each swallow. She hardly heard the crying child.
“He’s out, can you beat it?” announced Tom disgustedly as he slammed up the receiver. “Gosh! Is there another doctor nearby, I wonder?”
“I don’t need a doctor,” said the mother, feebly waving a weak, protesting hand. “I’ll drink this tea. I’ll be—all right—! I—must— get up—!”
“Get up nothing, Mudge!” said Tom earnestly. “You’ll stay right where you are. They are going to send the doc as soon as he gets in.”
“But—I must go—to the hospital—! Your father—!”
“What’s the matter with Dad?” questioned the boy. “No, don’t you try to answer yet. Just drink that tea. Here, give me that fan, Lou! I’ll fan her. Now, I’ll put my arm under your head so you can drink it. Then you’ll feel better.”
She drank the tea eagerly and then dropped back on the pillow, a wan anxiety in her face, and she looked toward her son with pleading in her eyes as if she yearned for comfort. “Your father has just been taken sick. He was unconscious. He ought not to have gone to work today—I’m—sure there’s some more injury—than we knew.”
“There, there, Mudge, don’t you fret now. I’ll go right over and see. Which hospital is it? It’s likely only the heat. It’s the hottest day in forty years they say.”
“St. Luke’s—!” murmured the wife with a trembling sigh. “Oh, I must go, Tom. He’ll—want—me!”
Well, you lie still, Mudge, and I’ll telephone, then we’ll know just what’s what! No, don’t you get up!??
?
“Betty Lou!” called her mother. “Turn out the gas! I smell my custard burning!”
The little girl flew to the kitchen and back instantly. The cries from the porch now sounded somewhat as if the young tyrant in the carriage had managed to strangle himself, but there was not time to do anything about it for vengeance had arrived in the form of his mother.
“Well! And so this is the way you earn your money, is it? So this is what my angel child has had to endure when I go away for a few minutes on a necessary errand, and pay my hard-earned money out to have him looked after—! He could yell his poor little heart out and nobody would pay any attention to him. There! There! Mudder’s buddy boy!”
She drew the carriage in front of the screen door and continued to talk effectively for the delectation of other neighbors who might happen to be sitting on other porches.
Betty Lou, her face filled with consternation and growing indignation, came to the door and interrupted her. “Mrs. Smith!” she said in her excited child voice that was trying to be convincing and dignified and wanted to cry. “My mother has just fainted away, and my father has been taken to the hospital, and I had to telephone for the doctor. Your little boy has been asleep all the afternoon until we woke him up telephoning. But you needn’t pay me any quarter if you feel that way. I don’t want it!” Then she turned and ran back to her mother.
“You’re an impudent kid if there ever was one, and I’ll never leave my angel child with you again! I certainly thought—!”
But Tom appeared at the door now with his football jaw in fine form and his eyes blazing. “That’ll be about all from you, Mrs. Smith,” he commanded fiercely. “My mother has been taken seriously sick, and you are making her worse. You can take your angel child and go to thunder!” And he shut the front door fiercely in her face and turned back to the telephone.
“Oh Tom!” wailed the sick woman. “You shouldn’t—!”
“Hush, Mudge, I’m getting the hospital. Don’t you worry about that fat slob, she never half takes care of her baby herself! Here! Here they are! Hello! Hello—!”
It was very still in the room. Mother and Betty Lou could distinctly hear every word that came from the instrument.
“I have an incoming call for you, will you take it now?” the operator asked.
“Sure,” said Tom, an anxious tinge in his voice, and casting an uneasy glance toward the couch.
“Hello!” came a young rasping voice. “I want Tom Arleth! Hello! Is that you, kid? Did you get my message? What? Well, I didn’t think the dumb eggs meant to give it to you. Say, kid, we’re staging a party ta-night, Crown Point Roadhouse, dinner and dance! Hot baby! Going to be some party. You bring your tin lizzie and meet at my house at quarter ta eight, see? You an’ I gotta carry the drinks, see? An’ don’t ya be late for—”
But Tom interrupted the harangue in a husky growl. “Nothing doing!” he roared, his face red and sheepish, eyeing his mother furtively. “Nothing doing! I’m busy!” and he slammed up the receiver and turned round to see his sister Jane standing in the front door, her suitcase and hat box at her feet, looking wonderingly around the room.
Chapter 3
Jane had found a great many things to think about on her way home.
In the first place after she had definitely decided not to take the next opportunity to return to the mountain house, she settled back, closed her eyes, and tried to review dispassionately the last few hours. Had she acted rashly or not? What was it all about anyway? Was she making a fool of herself? Would everybody laugh at her? Would they wonder unpleasantly at her sudden departure? Was there any chance that her going could be misunderstood and annoying rumors get about among the merry crowd with whom she had been playing so happily for the last three weeks?
Carefully she went over the wording of the note she had written to her friend and tucked under the door of the room where Carol slept with her sister. It said:
Dear Carol,
I’m terribly sorry to have to write this note to you, but I got a letter from home yesterday and I’ve been thinking it over till I’ve decided I must go home. Father has been in an accident, and Mother isn’t well, and they need me. It’s the right thing to do, I’m sure.
I’ve had a perfectly gorgeous time, and it’s going to hurt awfully to leave before my time is up. I just can’t bear to say good-bye to you all, and so I’m slipping away on the very early train and asking you to make my explanations, and give my good-byes to everybody. Thank them all for making me have a lovely time. How I hate to miss all you are planning for the next few days I have no words to tell. The only way I could help making a perfect crybaby of myself was to go and go quickly.
I shall be thinking of you all a lot and be with you in spirit, and I’d appreciate it if you’ll let me know how the tournament comes out and what you are doing next.
Forgive me for being a coward and running away from the good-byes, and don’t forget me.
Lovingly and tearfully,
Jane
No, surely Carol would understand, and with her rare good sense and kindliness explain so that everybody else would under- stand, even Lew Lauderdale.
Had she forgotten anything? No, she had looked in all the bureau drawers and under the bed and on the closet shelf. She couldn’t have left a shoe or a string of beads or anything possibly.
But now as she went over the past days, there came to mind one matter that had caused an undertone of uneasiness ever since she left home. It was centered about her Bible, the lovely new copy in real morocco, so small and soft and beautiful, with such thin paper and clear print, and those wonderful illuminating footnotes that made the text speak straight into one’s soul startlingly, because life fitted so perfectly into what the Book said—the Bible that Father and Mother had given her on her birthday, just before she left home. She had brought it away with such pride and joy, expecting to study it a great deal. Four whole weeks of leisure and that new Bible to read every day! That was what she had thought when she started on her vacation!
Only once had she opened it in all the three weeks she had been gone! The lovely little silk bookmark with the twenty-third psalm interwoven in delicate blue and gold, which had been Betty Lou’s birthday gift bought with her own money hardly earned by caring for Smiths’ baby, had not been moved from the first chapter she had read on the first morning she arrived at the mountain house.
She had wakened early before anyone seemed to be astir, reached from the bed to the little table where she had laid her Bible the night before, and lay there reading, beginning at the first of Genesis and taking the story of the universe as if it were all entirely new to her. She had a desire to start to read the new Bible through from the beginning again, though she had done it years ago when she was a little girl. She had decided to read a page a day, and take in all the footnotes, reading slowly and looking up all references.
With the sweet breath of the pines wafting in at her window and the song of wood robins and martins making melody in her soul, she read, at leisure from herself and her hurrying world for the first time since she graduated from high school. Perhaps it made the holy Word more palatable to her as she remembered vaguely while she read that she did not have to get up from that luxurious bed till she chose to do so. There were no alarm clocks in this gracious house of entertainment, no hurry calls to help in the kitchen before breakfast, no need to iron a clean dress for the little sister or mend a run in a stocking or help Father find a refractory collar button, no need to run to the corner grocery for something that had been forgotten or turn the bacon while Mother hunted a clean shirt for Tom or even polish her own shoes and baste in fresh collars and cuffs for herself. Everything was in utter order. Her spotless and correct wardrobe, for which she had worked hard through the winter, hung in the closet across the room, each garment on a lovely painted hanger, and all the little accessories and toiletries were in the dresser drawers by her side. When she arose she would put on a charming little sports outfit and g
o out to enjoy the day. There would be no hurrying to catch a trolley, no time in the office, grinding out letters, looking after card indexes, answering the call of her chief. It would be one long day of doing nothing but what she pleased. She would be a lady of leisure for four whole weeks! No wonder the origin of the universe could seem a pleasant pastime under such circumstances. She had a sense of beginning to be very wise, a comfortable sense of pleasure, and perhaps no little self-righteous pride in the thought that she desired to read the Bible while on her vacation.
So she lay happily and read, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” and she thought how nice it was of Him to do it and to give her a chance at last to really enjoy things and get acquainted with His world. She felt more like giving thanks to God that morning than ever before in her young life. If she had chosen a psalm to read instead of the first chapter of Genesis, her heart could have joined in the high call to give thanks with joyful melody.
She was presently lost in the wonder of that first footnote in her Scofield Bible. It told her of the eons of time between creation and re-creation. It opened to her mind the vast prospect of a world made out of nothing by an Almighty God, who created it beautiful and habitable, but a world that presently became mysteriously, cataclysmically wrecked by sin and remained dark and shapeless, uninhabitable, till God’s Spirit hovered over it, and called it into His new plan for it, a perfect dwelling place for man.
In amazement her fingers fluttered through the leaves and found the references in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel that spoke of this strange catastrophe and what followed when God began to make over His world. It read like the most amazing truth she had ever heard in the light of this new knowledge. She was so thrilled that she did not stop at the limitation of a page but turned the leaf and read on, till Carol suddenly tapped at the door between their rooms and called out good morning, demanding her full attention at once.