The Challengers (12 page)

The druggist, passing the booth, hesitated and finally tapped on the glass door and asked if there was anything he could do for her; was she ill or in trouble?

Mrs. Challenger lifted her white face and tried to answer. She did not know what to say. She didn't feel like telling him that she was at her wits' end and had just been asking God to somehow help her out and show her what to do.

"Oh, I just don't know what to do next!" she said desperately. "My son is hurt, and I can't seem to get anybody. I don't even know what hospital he's in, and nobody seems to know!"

The druggist asked a few keen questions and then called up information. In a few minutes, he summoned the frantic mother to a conversation with the hospital authorities.

But there were more delays. Accurate information from Stephen's room had to be awaited, and when it came it was indefinite.

Yes, young Challenger was there. Yes, he had a broken leg and some other injuries, not likely to be fatal, but the house doctor had not made his rounds yet. The nurse said he was doing as well as could be expected. Was there a telephone in his room? Would he be able to talk to her for a moment? More delay. Then a decided answer. No, he was not able to talk. He was under opiates and must not be disturbed. A message? Yes, she could leave a message, but she saw from the tone of the impatient nurse who was conducting the conversation that it was a long doubt as to when it would be delivered.

"Tell him I'm coming as soon as I can arrange to get away from his father, who is sick," she said desperately.

"All right!" answered the nurse indifferently. "I'll make a note of that and have them tell him when he is able."

"You will keep me informed of his condition?" The mother's voice was almost a sob.

"Oh, yes." The nurse took the address and the Brady telephone number, and then it was over and the receiver hung up. A blank wall of trouble seemed to surround the poor woman as she turned away, tried to thank the druggist for his kindness, and stumbled out into the chilly sunshine again. What should she do now? She had spent three dollars and fifty-five cents of her much-needed money and found out scarcely anything that she did not already know.

Out on the street again she paused, bewildered. What should she do next? Her inclination was to go back to the house and crawl into her bed. She felt as if she had received a death blow and her legs would no longer bear her on her way. She turned and walked slowly, in the uptown direction, wondering what was the matter with her senses. They seemed benumbed. Perhaps she was going to have a stroke. How did those things begin? And what would her poor children do then? Her husband in one hospital, her boy in another far away! Rosalie her baby, and brave little Bob not long since in the baby class! The two dear girls who needed her so much!

The thought stung her into keenness again. She must do something. There must be some way to get money, borrow it somewhere. She was so utterly ignorant about banking and such things. She had always been so guarded, first by her father, long since gone, and then by her wonderful husband. But it was not right. Every woman ought to understand a little business.

As she paced along, she forced herself to think of all the businessmen they knew who had money, or who could at least tell her what to do. She resolved to humble her pride, her husband's pride, too, she knew it would be, for he shrank so from telling anyone of his private affairs. But this was an emergency. He would surely approve.

There were a few names. She thought them over: Garwood, Warrington, Haverfield, Stowe, and Prevost. They knew her husband well but were socially so aloof, so high, so cold and haughty of manner, that it had not been a subject of consideration to turn to them. Now in her utter despair she resolved to humble her pride and go to them.

With trembling limbs she walked to the business office of Garwood and Sons, and after an unconscionable wait was informed that Mr. Garwood was out of town for a week or more.

She hurried away in relief from Garwood and Sons, so glad that she did not know the "sons," nor they her. Dr. Warrington was the next in her mind's list, a surgeon of renown. Dr. Warrington had always a pleasant smile on his face the few times she had met him, usually at some faculty affair where he occasionally lent his presence or on some great occasion where notables were present.

Breathlessly she entered the elevator in the great building where he had his office and ascended. But a frightened appeal to the severe person in shell-rimmed glasses who guarded him brought utter refusal. Dr. Warrington was performing a major operation and was occupied every minute until three o'clock when he had to take a train for Chicago to speak at the Medical Association. Mrs. Challenger was conscious of the recurring relief when she found she did not have to ask the learned doctor for charity. He would undoubtedly have given it, freely, smilingly, of course, but--how could she ever have got over asking him, an almost utter stranger? Perhaps such pride was wrong, but surely she was doing her best in spite of it.

As she dragged her weary feet back to the elevator, she found herself saying over and over, "Oh, God! What shall I do? Oh, God, I'm doing my best! In spite of failure, I'm doing my best. I surely am not to be blamed, am I? I can't help it that I hate this, but I'm doing it!"

Thus she justified herself to God so that perhaps He would see the injustice of her position and somehow turn the luck for the Challengers, who had always been so respectable and right living. They didn't really deserve such treatment. That was the undercurrent of her reasoning, "I'm doing my best, God. Why do things go against me all the time?"

She was not surprised when she was told that the noted lawyer Haverfield was in court pleading a murder case and it might be days before she could have an interview; and when they asked her if she would like an appointment for next week with him, she only sighed hopelessly and said it didn't matter. She had a feeling that if something didn't happen before next week they wouldn't be alive to need help.

Mr. Stowe was the president of a bank, and by the time she reached the bank it was three o'clock and banking hours were over. She was firmly and smilingly refused admittance. The doorkeeper, on seeing her discouraged face, reluctantly admitted that Mr. Stowe was sometimes found at his club after banking hours, and the discouraged woman dragged herself wearily to the great Mercantile Club building, where after a game of waiting fifteen minutes, Mr. Stowe, who was playing a game of billiards with some friends and enjoying a series of expensive cocktails between shots, sent up word that he was in an important conference just now but if she would come to his private office in the bank at eleven thirty the next day he would be pleased to grant her an interview.

Mrs. Challenger, with a feeling of unexpected deliverance, arose and started toward the great revolving outer door, but as she passed the Grill Room door, a sudden breath of delicious hot food was wafted to her that made her faint and dizzy. She wavered and would have fallen had not a hand been reached out to catch her and steady her to a chair.

There was instant solicitation. Two porters rushed to her assistance, two or three gentlemen lifted their hats respectfully with offers of help as she came slowly back to a weary consciousness, lifting bewildered blue eyes that had almost the same sweetness in them that her three daughters wore in theirs, quivering a little smile of apology with her delicate cameo lips.

"I was just a little faint, thank you," she trembled out the words and tried to rise. "I was so hurried I did not take time to lunch," she tried to explain.

A waiter came hurrying with a cup of hot tea and a little wineglass of something stronger. She refused the liquor but took the tea gratefully, a faint color coming into her pretty cheeks as she drank it and a slight lift of her chin as she handed the waiter a bit of silver. Then, though they would have detained her, she slipped away like a faint patrician shadow, trying to concentrate her mind on the one more call she had to make. One more and then she would be done, she told herself, half forgetting the reason for these calls in the distaste of making them.

Mr. Prevost was the head buyer in a great department store, and she was fairly trembling with weariness when after taking various elevators and traveling acres of aisles and departments, she at last arrived at his mahogany front office and made her simple request to see him.

She was led to an inner office, after declining to tell her errand to the underling set to guard him, and found a severe young woman like a perpetual icicle seated at a plate-glass desktop.

"Mr. Prevost is in Europe on a buying trip," explained the icicle. "I am taking his place. What can I do for you?"

"Oh!" said Mrs. Challenger meekly. Then, with relief, "Oh! Nothing, thank you. Mr. Prevost is a friend. My business was with him personally. I am sorry to have troubled you."

Then she walked out of the office with true Challenger dignity. It seemed to her that the burdens of the nations had been lifted from her shoulders. She had not had to ask loans or charity from any high-and-mighty acquaintance. She had faithfully been to everyone and been prevented from doing the thing that was so against her pride.

It was not until she was seated in the bus that would take her to the hospital that it suddenly came over her that her real plight was even worse than in the morning. True, she had not had to humiliate herself, but her husband was still needing a quiet place in the country, her son was still lying very ill far away and she unable to go to him for lack of money, and the entire family was not only in debt to a butcher but on the verge of starvation.

She was glad that there were no other passengers except an old woman with bundles who appeared to be asleep, for she could not keep the tears back and had to continually wipe them away.

The tea that she had had at the club had only given her brief stimulation, and now she realized that she should have stopped long enough in the city to get something to eat before going on to see her husband. But it was too late. She dared not waste another fare by going back. She would have to bear up somehow. Perhaps she would feel all right if she took a good drink of ice water at the fountain in the hallway at the hospital.

Mr. Challenger was sitting up when she got there. He smiled lovingly, and there was a light in his eyes as he greeted her.

"I began to think you were not coming," he said, as she stooped to receive his lover-like kiss. "You are tired! Mary! I shouldn't let you come to see me so often. It must be a long, long pilgrimage for you."

"It's not so far," said Mary Challenger lovingly and then remembered that her husband was reckoning from Glencove, the suburban home where he had left them when he was first taken sick. He was still in ignorance that they had moved when the first crash came three months before.

"You've not eaten your lunch!" said the wife, her eyes lighting on the untouched tray. "Why, you've not eaten a thing! How is it they left the tray so long?"

The sick man smiled.

"I asked them to leave it a little while," he said. "I was drowsy, but I must have slept a long time. I just woke up a few minutes ago. My regular nurse is off duty this afternoon, and the substitute doesn't bother to come in unless I call her. You see, I thought perhaps you would come early enough to have lunch with me if I waited a little. They always send twice as much as I can possibly eat. But it will all be cold now, and I suppose you had your lunch hours ago."

"Why, no," said Mary Challenger, smiling. "I didn't take time for anything but a cup of tea. I had--some business--to attend to downtown, that's what made me--so late! What fun it will be to have a meal together again. What have you got? Chicken? That's just as good cold anyway, and there's a whole breast! How good they are to you! And John, the potatoes aren't stone cold yet. Here, let me fix you so that you can reach the tray."

She roused herself to be bright and smiling and tried to make herself eat with a zest so that he should not suspect how utterly weary and heartsick she was. His eyes watched her lovingly as he ate bits of chicken and the roll that she spread for him and drank his milk obediently.

Mary was no longer hungry. She had gone too long, was too nervously exhausted to want to eat, but knowing she would be ill if she did not and realizing that here was a real meal that would not cost her a cent of the precious few dollars she carried, she forced herself to eat, slowly, smilingly, trying to forget her trouble.

"And what do you hear from Steve?' asked the father when he had finished the last bite of the snow pudding that had been his half of the dessert.

Stephen's mother dropped her handkerchief and stooped quickly to pick it up, trying to hide the distress in face and voice and steady her trembling lips to answer him.

"Why, he seemed cheerful--and busy--the last time he wrote," she managed to say, and then with the new skill she had been acquiring in changing the subject, she asked guilelessly, "What's your idea about what he shall do after he graduates? By the way, your youngest son says he doesn't think he shall go to college at all. He says it seems a waste of time to him. He wants to get to earning money. He says he is going to be a millionaire!"

They laughed together pleasantly over that, and if there was a bit of artificiality in Mary's laugh, the invalid did not notice it.

So they talked until it began to get dark, and suddenly Mary Challenger remembered that night had come upon her and she had as yet no way to get to her boy who was in trouble. She was no nearer a decision about what to do than when the telegram first came. She had an inexpressible longing to lay her head down on the shoulder that until this last six months had always been so strong to shelter her from all sorts of trouble and to just have her husband take the decisions from her and tell her what to do. Yet she knew that she must not. That if he knew all that was weighing upon her at this moment, it might be fatal to him. The doctor had warned her most effectually not to startle or alarm him in any way until his heart was in a condition to bear it.