Happiness Hill E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Poverty-stricken, hard-working Jane Arleth could not shake the feeling that she did not belong in Lew Lauderdale’s wealthy and sophisticated world. Still, he had taken great pains to see her and made no secret of the fact that he had fallen in love with her beauty. What harm could there be in sampling some of the carefree pleasures he and his circle of friends had to offer? But instead of finding the happiness she seeks, Jane suffers terrible humiliation and pain when she discovers the truth about Lauderdale’s world—and about herself. Then, just when Jane feels she has nowhere to turn, she finds help from a mysteriously familiar gray-eyed gentleman…

Leseprobe

Grace Livingston Hill

HAPPINESS HILL

Copyright

First published in 1932

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

1930s

Jane Arleth sat slowly down upon the extreme edge of her Pullman chair and looked hungrily out to the tiny mountain station she had just left.

There it was in the early morning light, every line of its rough gray stone as artistically in harmony with its woodsy surroundings as a lichen on a log! There was the nest of tall plumy pines that surrounded it and gave it background. There was the trim, tidily painted summer bus that had brought her down from the hotel a few minutes before, waiting now for a few chance passengers. There was the road it had come, the winding mountain road, fern-fringed and enticing, climbing back out of sight into the cool upward shadowed curves. Beyond and above, there would be the glimmer of the lake sparkling like a sheet of sapphire in the morning sunlight, tilting the canoes that rocked and lapped along its edges, slapping the sides of the larger boats anchored a little way out, bearing softly on its blue bosom the flock of white sails that, a little later in the morning, would be billowing in the wind across the little island.

Already, perhaps, Jeff Murchison and Rex Blodgett were out diving. Gayle Gilder and Sally and the rest would be going down for their morning dip in a few minutes. There would be cool blue shadows on the north porch where the pines were thickest about the hotel, a wonderful spot to come with a book before the world generally was astir. There would be the aroma of coffee, honeydew melons and toast, hot rolls just out of the oven, and a hint of brook trout frying in deep fat. And off to the left lay the golf course, already spotted with earnest devotees, and a match on for today. She was to have played with Overton Maybie, a great honor, she knew, that he should have asked her. And there was a mountain climb on for the afternoon, with a moonlight supper at the top, and a night in the log cabin or camped under the stars!

All this. And she was leaving it. Why?

The train gave a lurch and jolted her against the window as if to shake her awake to what she was doing. The bus driver lolled against the cushions and lit a new cigarette, lazily turning his head to watch the train. They were moving now.

Jane clutched the arms of her chair. But yesterday she had been one of a party who came down to see a comrade off. She leaned closer to the window to strain her eyes up the winding road. Perhaps she hoped against hope that even though she had taken all precautions to steal away without their knowledge, somebody would have discovered her absence and followed, just to give her a wave of the hand. But no, the road wound emptily up with not a soul in sight, and now the little stone station was slipping into the background, and the train was plunging into the forest. She was going away from all the beauty and fun, going a whole week before her vacation was over, with no necessity upon her, and stealing away like a thief in the night. Oh, why had she done it?

The station was out of sight now. She watched breathless for the opening in the trees where one could catch a glimpse of the ninth hole on the golf links, far away like an emerald bed, spread with patches of gleaming sand and a ripple of blue that was a water hazard.

She held her breath and bent low to look up at the one place where the hotel could be seen, perched like a great gray bird upon a spur of the mountain. And then as it, too, swept out of sight, and the train made rapid descent to the valley land below, she sat straight and looked about her, almost desperately! Her long-awaited vacation! Her wonderful vacation that she had slaved for and anticipated so many hard-worked months, was being cut short a week, and by her own act. Why had she done it? Was it possible that she had lost a little piece of her mind for a few hours since last night?

Down at the foot of the mountain there was another little station, not a lovely artistic bit of architecture, just a little wooden shanty where two lines met and exchanged baggage and passengers. She could still get off there. It was not too late. No one would know she had gone. They would think she had slept late. Ten minutes more and the up train would come along, and she could take the same bus back to the hotel that had brought her down. If she was discovered they would merely think she had been down for the ride or to mail a letter or send a parcel.

Suddenly her reasons for this abrupt flight seemed foolish, childish, crazy. Why had she done it? She sat back and tried to think it over.

It wasn’t just her little sister’s letter. Betty Lou had written very guardedly, though her cheerfulness was almost too thickly spread on to be real. Jane took the letter out and read it hurriedly, keeping her mind alert for the shanty station at the foot of the mountain where she might get off.

“Dear Jinny,

“We have had a lot of hot weather since you left. You certainly went away just in time. I went down and slept on the floor in the sitting room. It was 103 on our front porch yesterday afternoon. Mother had a fainting spell after lunch. She had been doing up raspberries but not so many this year because they are awfully high on account of the dry weather. But Mother would have some because you like them, and Tom likes them, too. But she is all right now, only Father came home last night a little hurt. He was in an accident, but it isn’t very bad. The man that hit him took him right to the hospital and had the bone set, and it’s going to be all right they say, and you are not to worry. It’s his right arm, but he says it’s lucky he is left-handed or he couldn’t keep on his job. He can write without hurting him very much, and I guess soon it won’t hurt at all. He cut his face some, too, but that’s not going to be serious, only just his back aches a little, and Mother thinks he’ll soon be well. She told me to say you are not to worry and not to come back a day sooner than you planned. Tom is staying home one week of his vacation anyway. The boy that was going fishing with him can’t get off right now, and Tom says he can’t see going alone. So Tom is going to help Mother with what Father usually does, and you are not to worry a bit.

“I got your lovely postcards, and so did Mother and the rest. That must be a wonderful hotel. I suppose when you come home it will seem dry having just cereal and coffee for breakfast when you’ve been used to brook trout every day. But I guess someday we’ll all get rich, and then we’ll go up to that same hotel all of us and spend a whole long lovely summer, won’t we? And I’m going to have a pink silk made just like the one you described in your last letter, the one that Bingham girl wore. I wish you would make a real good drawing of it so we can remember how it was made when we get money to have one.

“My little kitten is dead. The milk wagon ran over it. I buried it down in the backyard. I don’t think I’ll ever try to have a kitten again, it’s so hard to keep it alive in a place like this. The two little boys next door tied firecrackers to its tail last week. They had some left over from the Fourth, and Azalia was so scared I thought for a while she would just die then.

“I found a lovely pink rose on the sidewalk in front of our house yesterday. Somebody must have dropped it. I put it in your crystal vase in the parlor window and I’m awfully careful of it. You don’t mind, do you? I pretend our parlor is big and cool like the hotel one you told us about, and it smells just heavenly. Mother says it makes her think of “the spices that blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle” out of a hymn she sings—you know what one. She was lying on the sofa with a palm leaf when she said that, and smiling tired, the way she does sometimes, you know. I guess she misses you a lot, but we are all glad you are having such a wonderful vacation. Mother says it rests her just to think about it. She says it’s all-our-vacations because you are getting what we’ve wanted for you so long.

“I’ve learned to iron, and I’m going to iron Tom’s shirt. He’s taking a girl to ride in the Ford this evening. Mother kind of worries about the girl. She has her lips too red, she thinks. But she wears nice clothes. I saw her pass when I was coming from Sunday school last Sunday. But now I must go. Mother says to tell you don’t forget we all love you, and I do, too, awfully much. I’ll be glad when you’re home again, but I want you to have a good time, too,

“So good-bye,

“Your sister,

“Betty Lou Arleth”

Jane folded up the letter and looked anxiously out the window again. No, it wasn’t altogether the letter. They would not want her to come home until her time was up. They would be disappointed not to have her get the full benefit of her vacation, even though it was hard work to get along without her, even though they might be having harder times at home than they were telling her. She understood that fully. She knew and loved her dear ones, and knew they felt about her just as she would feel about them under similar circumstances. No, it was more than just the pathetic little letter that was sending her home.

Her mind went back to the day before when she had received it.

She had written Betty Lou at once a long letter, describing all the things she loved best to hear about, trying to put the cool breezes into her letter for Father and Mother, trying to put fishing and swimming and boating in for Tom, and let them enjoy her good times, at least through her letters.

And then she had mailed her letter and gone out to play tennis with Rex Blodgett.

How Betty Lou’s letter had crackled happily in her pocket, giving her a sense of the dearness of her family and their loving sacrifices for her sake, making her feel that she must get all she could out of this playtime because, in a sense, she owed it to them.

So the morning had sparkled in her soul and given wings to her feet and brought back the skill to her racket that had been a bit unpracticed since she had become a woman of business. To her fingertips, she felt that she was alive, and her skill was coming back in good form as in the days when she was at school and had had the name of being the champion of her class.

Carol had come down to the court—Carol Reeves who was really the instigator of this wonderful vacation. For Carol had invited her to go in their party, offered to share her room with her and make the expense less. Of course it had turned out that Carol had to take her younger sister in her care, and therefore could not carry out that part of the plan, but Mr. Reeves had kindly arranged for a smaller room for her without more expense, and the Reeves family had been charmingly cordial to her, making her feel as if she really belonged with them.

Yesterday Carol had come down to the court with Sally Loomis and Gayle Gilder, and presently the boys had sauntered up and sat down, watching the game and Jane felt stimulated by their presence so that she made some wonderful plays. The wine of excitement mounted to her head and made her wish that she might always live this carefree life, might always be free to play tennis whenever there was opportunity, play around at anything with these butterflies of fortune, and never again know what it was to feel that dead exhaustion that came from driving herself hard all day in the office, trying to do sometimes twice as much as was humanly possible in a day.

They had gone swimming after the tennis, and again Jane had been conscious of renewed vitality that the three weeks in the mountains had given her. Her diving was cleaner and in better form than she ever remembered it to have been. As in the tennis match, again and again they cheered her, until her head was very nearly turned with their kindly admiration. How glorious it had been to feel that power over her own muscles, to know that she was moving gracefully, easily, through the water, to have perfect assurance that whatever she attempted to do she would accomplish. She had been in an exalted mood that carried her through the morning in triumph, with a light in her eyes and a look of utter happiness on her face.

Had she been a bit self-conscious when she came down to lunch in the little blue frock worn for the first time, a dress she had been saving up for some special occasion? She knew it was attractive because of its heavenly blue and because of its utter simplicity.

Lew Lauderdale had been waiting at the door of the dining room with evident admiration in his eyes. He had paid her not a little attention during the three weeks that were past, and she could not help feeling flattered. She knew that all the other girls were eager for his company. He was a little older than the other young people, stunningly distinguished looking, with handsome eyes and a somewhat haughty bearing. He drove a car of fabulously priceless traditions, had his own yacht, and was making up a party for next month to take a trip. Of course that was out of the question for a businesswoman who had but a month’s vacation, and even that month was a special dispensation for this year—but it would be nice to be able to boast an invitation, and he was a fascinating companion when he chose to pay attention to a girl.

They had walked down the slippery path beneath the resinous pines, and he had seated her in a lovely nook where a view of lake and forest and opposite distant mountains made life seem like one beautiful dream. He had taken her on lovely walks several times before, but there seemed to be something different about this one—the cozy seclusion of the place where they were seated, the intimate air he assumed, the way he looked at her and smiled. She found her senses quickened and felt the color more than once leaping into her cheeks. And once, when she lifted her eyes full of laughter to meet his, she found his glance holding hers in a quick meaningful way that gave her the instant assurance that he was singling her out in a little more definite way than he had ever done before, and her heart went racing along with pulsations that almost frightened her for a moment, like a pleasant intoxication. She had not stopped to question what it meant or what he meant. It was just a gladness that he liked her, and that the day was fine, and she was here. A happiness to be a part of this company who could go anywhere they liked and do what they pleased, and yet were willing to play with her, a plain little business girl who had her living to make in the world. Just an unconscious bit of pride that the man whom the other girls openly admired and wanted had chosen to spend this lovely afternoon with her. She was casting about even then in her mind to know just how she could get this across to her adoring family without seeming to make too much of it. Mother was keen to see into the heart and meaning of everything.

But what was this he was saying, about her eyes and hair?

“I’d like to have you painted in just that pose, with this very background. Turn your head a little to the left. That’s it, just so. Lift your chin a trifle! There! Like that! I wish I had brought my camera. Do you think you could hold the pose till I run back and get it?”

“Oh, dear me, no!” she had told him. “By the time you got back I would have the most self-conscious smirk you ever saw on human face. Let’s talk about something else. Let’s admire that mountain over there!”

But his glance continued to hover over her face as a bee sips honey from a flower, until she felt almost uncomfortable under his intimate gaze.

Suddenly he asked a question. “Where do you live when you are home?”

She told him, and instinctively her hand stole to the little silken pocket of her sports frock and touched the soft crackle that was Betty Lou’s letter. There was something glad about remembering her little sister and the dear home ones just now while she was having such a wonderful time; and yet, did there somehow seem to steal a mist over the brightness of the day as she remembered her mother lying on that couch and almost fainting? Her father with a broken arm, trying to hold down his job, knowing that at his age one did not ask for time off on account of accidents. A sudden grip of fear touched her heart fleetingly.

The young man quested more definitely about the street where she lived, and suddenly it came before her mental vision in all its sordidness; the cheap little street of cheap little houses in twins; the twang of the cheap Victrolas and homemade radios; the voices of angry mothers berating angrier children; the cries of the ashman and ragman and hucksters; the clang of the trolley car at the corner, that most necessary article of conveyance for a family that boasted only one little secondhand Ford; the dusty geraniums in the flower box that Betty Lou loved and neglected and nobody else had time to attend to; the scrawny kitten that Betty Lou had hurried in the tiny backyard below its former favorite seat on the fence; the yelping little puppy next door that was always getting underfoot and clawing appalling runs in one’s new stockings as it squirmed in welcome; the boy across the street who was learning to play the cornet during the evenings; and the other neighbor who burned his garbage late at night and filled the air with an undesirable smell!

A cloud passed over her young face.

“It’s not a very pleasant neighborhood,” said Jane. “I hate it. But Father doesn’t think it’s possible to make a change at present.”

“Well, he has no right to force you to live where you don’t want to,” said the young man’s hard, calculating voice, suddenly breaking on her astonished senses. “In this age of the world, a girl as old as you has a right to choose her own life. Why don’t you come in town and take one of those exclusive little apartments that are being put up now? They are the last word in all that’s comfortable and smart. I’d like nothing better than to help you choose the right one. Then I could see a lot of you this winter and no one to bother us. Families are rather superfluous in this age of the world, don’t you think?”

Jane had been listening in growing amazement and indignation. Something cold and disappointing seemed to clutch at her heart.

“Mine are not,” she said coldly. “And my father never has forced me to live anywhere. He does not have to. I choose to live wherever life has placed him. I love my family.”

“Oh, of course, if you feel that way,” said the young man indifferently, “I’m sure it’s very commendable of course. But I thought you said you hated it. I was only suggesting a very delightful arrangement, speaking one word for you and two for myself, you know. I thought we could play around together a good deal this winter if you had a nice smart little establishment of your own.”

“That is not my idea of a home,” said Jane, rising suddenly to her feet. “I never said I hated my home, only the place where it had to be, but that is a trifle compared to losing it. Come, if we are to play those nine holes of golf this afternoon, isn’t it time we were starting?”

“You know,” said the young man rising and detaining her with a clasp of his hand on her arm, “I’m including you in my yacht trip next month.”

As Jane remembered those words on her way down the mountain to the little valley station, her eyes took on a gleam of triumph and her lips had a set of pride. He had asked her, at least. She had that to remember, and she could have had more if she would. Her head went up and her shoulders set squarely, as her thoughts brought back the conversation that followed.

“Thank you,” she had said with still an edge of coldness in her voice she was glad to remember, “but I’m a businesswoman. I cannot get away at that time of year.”

“A—businesswoman!” he said in astonishment, looking her over again as if he must have made a mistake. “But—I understood—aren’t you Carol Reeves’s cousin?”

Jane laughed. “No, I’m only a school friend, and quite on my own. Does that make a difference?”

Perhaps she ought not to have said that last, she reflected, her cheeks burning a little at the thought of the look, the appraising look of almost reproach he had given her. But he had rallied at once and answered her cheerfully: “Not at all! It really makes it all the more interesting. And all the more reason why you should have that little apartment of your own I spoke of. Most young businesswomen are doing that today.”

“Well,” said Jane, summoning a little laugh, “then they are not in my class. My mother wouldn’t consider that respectable, and—neither would I. Shall we take this shorter trail? It is later than I thought.”

Through the rest of the afternoon, Jane had been strangely aloof. She was glad to remember that she had kept the conversation from dangerous topics and filled the time with cheerful banter. She could not help knowing, as she told over the hours of the afternoon, that she had lost nothing in his estimation by her indifference. Well, that helped out her pride. But now that she was really off, was she glad or sorry? Was she going to get off at the valley station and go back into the party again, or was she going to carry out her purpose and disappear into her own world again?

As the station drew nearer and her thoughts more vividly brought back the events of yesterday, she felt again that her reasons for going were justified. She felt once more the indignation she had felt at first when Lauderdale had suggested that her dear, hardworking father was ill-treating her, imposing upon her. The idea was revolting. It seemed almost as if she had been disloyal to her home and parents to have been in the company of a man who would utter such a suggestion. The more she thought about it, the more indignant she felt.

Was there also some bitterness because he had, by his own words, spoiled her ideal of him? She had thought him fine, had pictured him being lovely and generous to everyone, had envisioned his perfect understanding of all tender relations in life, and now she suddenly saw him as a selfish man who was thinking of his own interests, with a petted upper lip, a sensuous lower lip, and a calculating eye.

Oh, she did not put all this into words in her troubled thoughts, but the lips and the calculating eye hovered in the background and helped out the bitterness in her heart. They were there for some future reckoning that she knew must come. Had she perhaps been in danger of putting this man higher in her own thoughts than he had any right to be? Was that what hurt? The beauty of his personality as she had seen it at time flashed across her mind and stabbed her. Was this the way her beautiful vacation was to end?

The valley station came in sight and the train halted. Jane shrank back into her seat. There were people on the platform, three men and a very pretty girl, standing by a shining limousine. She vaguely remembered seeing the girl and one of the men at the hotel one day, but she did not know who they were, could not remember their names. She watched them furtively, half-fearing someone would recognize her and question her going. She swung her chair around to face toward the window as one of the younger men of the party bade the others good-bye, kissed the pretty girl, and got on board the train just as it lurched on its way again.

The man came into the same car and took the chair across the aisle from her, but Jane did not look up. Her eyes were looking out the window, unseeing, watching the landscape. Presently she let her eyelids close and, resting her head back, shut herself into her own thoughts.

She did not know that the delicacy of her young profile was etched in cameo relief against the dark green of the chair, nor that the golden light on the curl of her eyelashes and on the russet hair that escaped from the close little green hat she wore were good to look upon. Nor was she conscious that the chair across the aisle still had its back to its window and was facing toward her and that the person who occupied it, though he held a New York paper up before him as if he were reading, was in reality holding it just below the line of his vision and was not reading a word.

Jane was thinking back, bit by bit over her vacation and over what she had done and wondering why she had cut herself off and was going home like this. For there were other things, too, besides Llewellyn Lauderdale that troubled her.

Chapter 2

On Flora Street it was ninety-eight in the shade, and Betty Lou was trying to keep the flies off a neighbor’s baby, whom, in consideration of a quarter, she had agreed to care for that afternoon. Betty Lou was ten and was already a businesswoman. While the baby slept she was reading over for the seventeenth time a worn copy of Little Women.

A soft sound inside the screen door made Betty Lou close her book softly, lay down the rasping palm leaf fan she had been wafting over the sleeping baby, and start up. She tiptoed to the door and opened the screen quietly, peering into the dimness of the living room. Seeing an empty couch, she hastened back through the dining room into the small kitchen beyond.

“Mother! You promised you’d take a nap!” she reproached.

“I did, dear! Truly I did. I feel quite refreshed. I must have slept a long time!”

“You didn’t sleep ten minutes, Mumsie. I looked at the clock. Please, Mother! You look so white, Jane will say I didn’t take care of you! You know the doctor said you must lie still till the cool of evening.”

“Well, I’ll come back in a few minutes, I must just get the dinner started. You know Father will not want to eat. I thought I’d fix a little cup custard and get it real cold on the ice. That might tempt him. He loves custard! I won’t be but a minute, dearie. There! I hear your baby stirring! Run back quick! He ought not to wake up so soon, he’ll be on your hands all the afternoon.”

Betty Lou darted cautiously back to the porch and began wafting the palm leaf, and after a few minutes the baby relaxed from his fretful stirring and settled into sleep again. Betty Lou adjusted the dejected mosquito netting that the baby’s mother had furnished to keep off the flies, and settled back into her book again, but her mind was not on the story. She turned anxious eyes toward the interior of the house and listened for the sounds of egg beater and opening oven. Presently she stole back into the kitchen.

“Mother, aren’t you going to lie down again?” she pleaded. “You’ve got the custard in the oven. I can watch it. Baby is really asleep now.”

“Yes, just in a few minutes, dear,” said the mother, trying to speak brightly, “I just want to butter this bread. Tom likes bread pudding, you know, and it will help to fill up. We haven’t much for dinner tonight, just that stew, and Tom is always so hungry. You might make a little bit of sauce. There’s enough butter. You could take it out on the porch and do it quietly.”

“Well, couldn’t I make the bread pudding? I know how.”

“It’s almost made, dear. I’m all right. You get the butter and sugar and fix the hard sauce. There! There goes the telephone! You answer it, quick! The bell will waken the baby!”

Betty Lou went to the telephone in the dining room, and her mother, filled with sudden premonition, followed to the doorway, eggbeater still in hand.

“Hello!” said Betty Lou shyly.

A rasping voice came over the wire. Betty Lou looked up at her mother with frightened eyes.

“No,” she said in almost a whisper. “No, he isn’t here!”

“What?” rasped the voice, audible even in the kitchen. “Have you lost yer voice? Speak up. Can’t ya take a message?”

“Who is it?” asked Betty Lou’s mother anxiously.

“It’s a girl!” said Betty Lou with an awed voice, putting her hand carefully over the mouthpiece and speaking in a whisper.

“A girl!” said her mother, instant alarm in her eyes. “What does she want?”

“She wants Tom.”

“Here, let me have the telephone!”

Mrs. Arleth dropped the egg beater on the pantry shelf and came forward with determination in her tired face.

“Hello, you dumb egg, what’s the matter with ya?” came the rasping voice in her ear. “Who is this anyway?”

“This is Thomas Arleth’s mother,” said Mrs. Arleth, with dignity.

There was a pause and then came the voice again, not in the least awed.

“Oh! All righty! Well, c’n you give Tom a message? We’re having a dance ta-night, see? And we want Tom ta come and bring his tin lizzie ta my house by quarter ta eight, see? We’re staring at eight o’clock sharp cause we’re going out ta Crown Point ta that roadhouse, and we got our tables all engaged, and they’re kinda fussy about yer being on time, see? Tell Tom ta get a hustle on and not keep us waiting, see?”

“I see!” said Tom’s mother severely, and she hung up the receiver.

She looked around at Betty Lou with a new kind of anguish in her eyes before which the little girl could only stand dismayed.

“Oh, what is the matter, Mother?” cried Betty Lou, her eyes wide with an unnamed fear. “Is that the girl with the painted mouth?”

“I don’t know,” said Tom’s mother in a colorless voice. “I’m afraid so, Betty Lou.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell her to get out? To get right out and not bother my brother anymore?” A white little-girl-rage filled Betty Lou’s big blue eyes and trembled on her delicately chiseled lips. Her gold, frizzy, curly hair stood out about her dainty head like a halo shimmering in the afternoon sunlight that came in through the front door behind her, and she looked like a little avenging angel. “Why didn’t you, Mother?” she reiterated.

“Oh!” said the mother, tottering to the chair and putting down the telephone on the table, then burying her face in her hands. “Oh, my boy! What can he see in a girl like that?”

“I should think Father would tell Tom he can’t have a girl like that!” said the little sister indignantly. “I’ll tell him when he comes home how bad he is acting, going with a girl like that! Jane would if she were here, I know she would.”

“No, Betty Lou,” said her mother, lifting her head forlornly, “you mustn’t undertake to talk to Tom about it. You’re only a little girl, and you might do more harm than good. Tom wouldn’t like it.”

“Well, Tom is making you cry!” said Betty Lou, beginning to shed tears herself. “Tom ought to know how bad he is making you feel. Won’t you tell him then, Mother?”

“Oh, I don’t know yet, dear,” said the mother, lifting her face and wiping away the tears with the corner of her apron. “I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve got to think about it.”

“Well, I wish Jane was home!” said Betty Lou. “I’m sorry now I told her to stay as long as she could.”

“No, Jane needs her vacation. She works hard. She’s a good girl.”

“Of course she is,” said Betty Lou, “but you’re a good mother, too, and you need a vacation or something. I just wish I was as old as Jane for a few minutes. I’d do some things. I’d tell some people what they are doing.”

“Be careful, little daughter,” warned the mother with a sigh, “don’t you remember that saying about ‘fools’ that ‘rush in where angels fear to tread’? When you get a little older, you’ll learn that you can’t always tell people plain facts about what they are doing. They won’t stand for it. Tom thinks he is almost a man, little daughter, and he resents interference.”

“Wouldn’t you interfere if you saw him stepping on a broken bridge, Mother?” asked the little girl.

“Oh, I suppose so,” sighed the mother with a desperate note in her voice, “but there might be some kinds of interference that would only send him quicker over into the water.”

Betty Lou considered this a moment gravely, then she said earnestly, “Well, anyway, we can pray, can’t we? I’m going to pray.”

“Yes, dear, we can pray,” said the mother, and bending she kissed the sweet white forehead and earnest eyes of the child.

Betty Lou stood still for a moment where her mother had left her, realizing the soft tremble of her mother’s lips; the weak, cold touch of her flesh wet with perspiration against her own vital young face; the tear she had left on Betty Lou’s cheek; sensing that her mother was going far beyond her strength and that this new trouble about Tom that had come to their knowledge only since Jane went on her vacation was being one too many for the burden bearer of the family.

Betty Lou blinked her eyes and looked about the room wildly as if in search of something comforting. There lay the little pink organdy on the table with the needle stuck athwart the hem, that her mother was lengthening for her because she had shot up so this summer that it simply wouldn’t do another time with her bony knees showing. There lay Father’s worn woolen underwear on the couch with a basket of still more worn woolens on the floor beside it from which Mother was cutting patches to make the best ones last another winter. Cutting and sewing hot woolen patches this hot day with the thermometer ninety-eight at the shadiest end of the porch! Mother was always having to do things like that. Mother was out there now making salads, the kind Tom liked. Tom, with a girl like that! Mother ought to lie down!

But her sorrowful meditations were interrupted just then by an outcry from the young tyrant in the baby buggy, and Betty Lou went with swift steps to the rescue. A fly had stolen into an undefended corner of the netting and was sporting over the baby’s nose and toes. Betty Lou shooed him out, straightened the little soiled garments, mopped off the drops of perspiration from the fat cheeks and forehead, fanned gently with the big palm leaf, and at last the baby slept again. Betty Lou settled down uneasily on the edge of her chair, her eyes off down the street, her thoughts off on a mountain where her sister Jane was enjoying her vacation. How much difference Jane made when she wasn’t there! Somehow Jane always seemed to know how to straighten everything out. What ages it was since Jane went away! It couldn’t be possible it was only three weeks ago. And another whole week before she came back! Oh, if Tom would only come home, maybe he could make Mother lie down. But then if he came wouldn’t they have to tell him about the girl calling? What would they do if Mother got really sick? Where could Tom be anyway? This was his vacation, too. Perhaps he had met the girl out somewhere. Oh dear! There was the telephone again, and the baby was stirring!

With an anxious wafting of the fan two or three times toward the restive cherub, she slipped toward the door again, but Mother had reached the telephone and was already talking. Would that be that girl again? Betty Lou hesitated, listening, her fan stretched to keep a breeze going over the baby. She heard her mother say in a sharp startled voice, “Who? Where? What hospital?” Then there came a soft confused sound something like a moan and a dull thud followed by the bumping of the receiver as it fell!

She dropped the palm leaf and flew inside the door. Her mother had fallen to the floor with her head and shoulders half-supported by the foot of the couch, the telephone lolling from her nerveless fingers and the receiver rolling about on the floor aimlessly.

“Mother! Mother!” cried the little girl in anguish. “Oh, Mother! What is the matter?”

She dropped down beside the unconscious mother and reached for her hands, which seemed so damp and cold they chilled her. In the dim light of the room she could not see her mother’s face till she brought her own close to it, and then she saw that the eyes were closed. With a convulsive sob she cried out again and put her lips against those that had never before failed to response to her caresses, but there was no response now, and the lips were chilly. On this hot, hot day her face was like ice, wet and cold as ice.

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.