“I wouldn’t want you to be too sure of that, Pops,” Carey warned. “If I were you, I wouldn’t
quite
forget the way to the storm-cellar. Two women in love with the same man mean trouble in anybody’s language!” She smiled at Margaret.
“But if the two women try to realize that the only way to make the man happy is by being ordinarily civil to each other, don’t you suppose they could manage not to keep him in the storm-cellar
all
the time?” laughed Margaret.
“We could try, Margaret — we could try,” Carey agreed.
“We will, Carey. I’m terribly sorry — ” began Margaret, but Carey cut in swiftly:
“Lets just skip it, if you don’t mind. Pretend it never happened — can’t we?”
“Of course, Carey.”
Carey, going out to the garden a little later, told herself soberly that this was merely a truce between herself and Margaret. They would never by any stretch of the imagination learn to be friends; they were essentially much too different for that. But for the sake of the man they both loved they could, Carey argued with herself, behave a little more like civilized human beings. And she promised herself to see to it that she kept her own share of that bargain, no matter what Margaret might do.
Her thoughts swung then inevitably toward Joel. When she heard a car driving along the road outside she tensed and waited, holding her breath; when the car went on instead of turning in at the drive, her heart fell a little. But each time another car came along, she had that moment of breathless hope, only to be disappointed when the car went on. And it always went on, for it was never Joel.
Not even to herself would she admit the truth about her desire to see Joel. Elaborately, she told herself that it was because she was ashamed of the impulse that had sent her off with Ronnie. That Joel was merely her friend — or he had been — and she wanted his good opinion once more. She shivered a little at the memory of the look in his eyes when he had stood beside the restaurant table and told her that outrageous story about her father. And yet she knew now that if she had really gone with Ronnie, she would have dealt her father a blow from which he might not have recovered. Joel’s story might easily have come true.
It was hard to believe that she could have grieved over Ronnie; that she could have imagined herself in love with him. A man who traded shamelessly on his good looks and personal magnetism, not only to feather his own nest, but to make things supposedly easier for her. He had thought so little of Carey, had held her in such small esteem that he had believed she would share with him the fortune he had deliberately filched from Ann. She set her teeth hard at the shame of that thought.
Somehow the pattern of her days had changed. She no longer hated waking up in the morning to another day here in this old place. She no longer welcomed darkness because it would mean a few hours of forgetfulness, the passing of time. Her interest in the garden had revived — the interest which had seemed to shrivel when first she had known that Ronnie was going to be free of Ann.
She took a new interest in the house, too. Under the busy hands of the carpenters, the plasterers and plumbers, the old place had become a charming country home; green shutters at the front windows, above glowing window-boxes filled with blossoming petunias; crisp curtains at the open windows, shining polished floors, cool white walls, ivory woodwork, new upholstery on the worn but still substantial old furniture. It was hard to believe that this was the bleak, barnlike old place to which she and her father had come on a cold, rainy night in early December.
She walked across the green meadow and up the hill to the Hogan place one afternoon to find Ellen Hogan in the chicken yard tenderly “taking off” a setting hen and her family.
Ellen was scooping fluffy little puff-balls of downy yellow chicks into her apron as Carey came up, and when Ellen lifted her face her eyes were shining a little and her work-roughened hands were gentle as they touched the tiny, soft things.
“Seems like I don’t ever get used to ‘em being so little and soft and downy,” said Ellen as she transferred the baby chicks to their wildly clucking mother, who promptly spread her wings as the little puff-balls sped obediently beneath that shelter. “How’s your pappy this morning?”
“Oh, he’s fine — he’s ploughing,” boasted Carey, seating herself on the edge of an up-turned wheelbarrow and watching Ellen as she brought out a large covered box from which came the unmistakable “cheep-cheep-cheep” of more baby chicks. “What are you doing with those?”
“She’s such a big hen that it seems kind of foolish just lettin’ her run around with fourteen chicks,” answered Ellen. “So I sent in town for fourteen more incubator babies. That’ll give her a kind of respectable-sized family.”
“But won’t she know they aren’t hers? Will she take them?” demanded Carey.
“Some hens’ll take all you’ll give ‘em — some won’t be bothered with none they don’t hatch themselves. Lift up the edge of the coop, will you, Carey?”
She knelt beside the coop and lifted the lid of the box. Ellen spilled out the little, cheeping puff-balls. Instantly the hen began to cluck and the chicks raced to her and under her wings, as though they had known her all their tiny lives.
‘They ain’t never knowed nothin’ about a mother, them bein’ incubator chicks,” said Ellen. “But the minute they heard her voice, they knew she was their mother. Nature’s kind o’ wonderful, ain’t it?”
There came the sound of a car along the highway and Carey straightened, the swift, hot color stinging her cheeks. Even at this distance she could see that it was Joel’s car. For a moment she held her breath, waiting to see whether he was going to turn in at the Hogan gate. When he didn’t her shoulders sagged a little and she drew a hard breath, forgetting that Ellen’s shrewd eyes were upon her, completely unaware that she was betraying herself.
“Disappointed because he didn’t come in?” asked Ellen.
Carey knew she was flushing even while she flung up her head defiantly and asked, “Disappointed? Why should I be?”
“Because Joel didn’t stop, of course — why else? You’re crazy-mad about the man, and there ain’t a mite of use of you tryin’ to pull the wool over my eyes.”
“You — why, you’re crazy!” stammered Carey.
Ellen didn’t even try to control the snort. It was a very fine snort, expressive of a vast amount of disdain as she said sternly, “Carey, ain’t it time you stopped keeping your head buried in the sand like an ostrich, and looked facts in the face? You and Joel are as much in love with each other as two people ever get. Why you go around wasting all this grand time when the two of you could be so happy plum beats me.”
“You — you’re quite mistaken, Mrs. Hogan. Joel despises me, as of course he should.”
“And why should he?”
“Because I’m — a fool.”
“Shucks! If that was enough to make a man stop lovin’ a girl, there’d never be any more marriages,” snapped Ellen. “My stars and bars, Carey — all girls are fools at one time or another in their lives, and if men ain’t even bigger fools, they know it. So what right has Joel got to stop lovin’ you just because you’ve been like other girls?”
Carey clutched for her dignity, her composure. But the best she could do was to slide off the wheelbarrow and dust her hands with an elaborate air of unconcern. “But you see, Ellen, before a man can stop loving a girl, he’s got to start! And Joel never started loving me.”
“And that’s probably as big a lie as you ever told in your life. He’s been off his head about you ever since you came here to live. Anybody with one eye and half sense could see that. Lots of folks did.”
“It seems to me that lots of folks in Midvale are busy trying to see a darn sight more than really exists,” snapped Carey. “I wonder how it would be if they minded their own business for a change?”
Ellen’s mouth thinned in the faintest of wintry smiles. “Be right dull, I’d think,” she answered, and changed the subject.
LATER in the week she had accepted an invitation from some of her new-found friends for a party on the other side of Midvale. She had gone with a family party, quite content not to have any escort of her own and she had enjoyed the party thoroughly. When it began to break up, one of the girls with whom she had come, said:
“I know you won’t mind, Carey. Joel’s going to drive you home. We have to see that a friend of Mother’s gets home, and Joel says it isn’t much out of his way to drive you home.”
Carey’s heart gave a little exultant leap and then sank. Joel stood before her looking down at her, his jaw tight-set, his eyes grim. Obviously the prospect of driving her home didn’t appeal to him; and because she was thrilled at the thought of being with him, she wanted him to be glad, too.
“But — I don’t like to put you to so much bother,” she stammered.
“It’s no bother at all. Shall we go?”
“I — yes, of course,” Carey exclaimed unhappily and said good-night to her friends.
It was a summer night and there was a moon. Carey told herself forlornly that she should have expected something like that. It was a night made for love and lovers. If only Joel hadn’t become disgusted with her, if Joel didn’t despise her —
“Sorry you were forced to accept my company,” he said. “But of course, short of creating a scene, there really wasn’t anything to be done — ”
“It’s quite all right with me,” Carey said bitterly. “Only — it must be tiresome for you, having to be pleasant to a girl you despise.”
“Who said I despised you?”
“It’s quite obvious, I think.”
“Is it?” Joel’s tone was curt.
They had come to a crossing just before entering the sleeping village. A man ran out into the silver-white moonlight, hailing them.
“That you, Doc?”
Joel brought the car to a sharp halt and leaned out.
“They want you over at the Ponders’s place,” said the man. “Jake Martin telephoned here for me to watch out for you and stop you if I could. Liz Ponders has took bad.”
“Thanks, Bud. I’ll go right over,” said Joel. He swung the car around before he looked down at Carey and said uncertainly, “But — I’ve got to get you home.”
“Take me with you. Maybe I can help — if not, I can sit in the car and wait until you’ve finished.”
The man beside the car said, “They said Miz’ Ponder was took pretty bad, Doc. They wanted you should hurry.”
“Okay, Bud. If they call again, tell ‘em I’m on my way.”
The little car leaped ahead like a suddenly spurred beast. The road swung away from the paved highway almost at once and over a deeply rutted country road. About three miles from the highway they came to a slatternly looking house set down in the midst of a cluttered yard where piles of old tincans and rubbish lay carelessly about. In the silver-white flood of moonlight the place seemed unbearably dreary; not even the magic of the silver night was able to disguise one iota of its ugliness.
But there was no time to be aware of such sharp contrast between beauty and ugliness. Joel stopped the car and he and Carey went toward the house. Already they could hear the weary crying of a baby; a pitiful whimpering, almost animal-like wail.
Joel pushed open the front door and in the light of an oil-lamp Carey saw a scene she was never to forget. A big room, its walls so thin and broken that the moonlight crept through in spots. An old rusty stove; a broken table covered with newspapers and on it two or three chipped, stained dishes and the end of a stale loaf of bread. Grouped around the table there were half a dozen children; all tow-headed, with thin faces and big, frightened eyes. In an old wooden box beside the stove a baby lay on a pillow and wailed, that weary, hopeless crying they had heard when they first drove up.
The oldest of the children, a girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen, said “Howdy, Doc. Ma’s in there. She’s pretty sick. I think she took somethin’.”
Joel went swiftly into the other room and Carey, feeling the solemn, terrified eyes of the children upon her, went over to the wooden box and looked down at the baby.
“He ain’t really bad,” the older girl explained loyally. “He’s just hungry, and we ain’t got nothin’ to feed him.”
“Oh — the poor mite!” Carey bent to lift the baby in her arms.
He was so tiny, so light that it was as though she held a small doll in her arms. His tiny face was like that of an old man; his wee hands were like claws. He was almost repulsive, like a tiny skeleton with thin yellow skin drawn tightly over the bones of his little skull; but he was also the most heartbreaking small scrap of life she had ever beheld.
“Haven’t you anything for him — milk or something?” she said to the girl.
“He ain’t had no milk since yestiddy,” answered the child, and for all the stoicism in her voice, there was agony in her eyes as they fastened on the baby’s face. “Pa run off and left us last winter and Ma ain’t been able to work none since the baby was born. We ain’t had no money and folks wouldn’t give us no more credit.”
Carey’s heart was stricken with horror that such things could really be. Here within ten or fifteen miles of her, while she had been busily hating the old house in which she lived, feeling poor and destitute and miserable, this had been going on; starving children; a woman fighting an unequal battle. She bent swiftly and laid the still wailing baby back in his wooden box.
“Is there any place near here where we can buy some food?” she asked the girl.
“Yes’m — Jake Martin runs a fillin’ station about a mile from here, an’ he keeps open all night — only he won’t give us no more credit. Says he’s got a lot o’ hungry young uns of his own to feed — ”
Carey went swiftly to the closed door of the other room and opened it slightly. Joel, beside the bed, his fingers on the limp, bony wrist of the woman who lay there, looked up and then came forward.
“I’ll be here most of the night,” he whispered. “You’d better take my car and run along home — ”
“I’m taking your car to go to Martin’s filling station for some food for these children,” Carey cut in swiftly. “The little girl is going to show me the way.”
“Sure you want to?”
“Can you doubt it?”
There was a look in Joel’s eyes she had never seen there before. Then he nodded and turned to the child.