Ariel Custer (3 page)

Emily Dillon had been her father’s protector and slave as a young girl, because she had promised her dying mother to stay with him and take care of him. Sometimes she had been able to keep him from drinking for months at a time, but she had paid the price of alienation from friends and kindred, and from all the things that a young girl counts dear. She had kept his house and tended him like a child when he was drinking and disagreeable. She bore with his tyrannies and petty cruelties and loved him in spite of it all; she had submitted to scrimping and going without when she knew he was well able to buy her all she wanted, without a murmur; and she had never failed in her loyalty to him and his wishes, though it had gone hard with her when she suspected that he was being unjust and dishonest with others; and so when at last his death set her free and then she found that his will had laid his bonds upon her once more, and put a woman tyrant over her in his place, she gravely and sweetly submitted, knowing that the justice of God might demand this in restitution. Not even for freedom would she hint to any that her father had not been right in anything. Not for worlds would she leave a just debt of his unpaid. This it seemed was the only way to repay the injustice done to Joe Granniss years agone, and so this she must endure. And, well, what did it matter? Life was not a golden pavement to walk down without a care.

The cousins raged and reasoned; they urged and protested, but she was gently firm. She would carry out her father’s will. And she lived her quiet life apart, going about in her own house, yet not in reality its mistress, keeping her reserves in spite of all the grilling that Harriet Granniss gave her, looking back to a few bright days in the past, looking ever forward with golden vision to a time when it all should be over forever.

For Emily Dillon had one bright memory in her life that was like a gorgeous jewel, for which all the rest of her somber life was like a dull but lovely antique setting, valuable because it held the jewel.

Long ago there had been Nathan Barrett, a big, strong, clean-souled, clear-eyed youth, who had carried her books home from school, taken her to gather chestnuts, and to go skating, drawn her on her sled, and brought her red apples and the first violets. They had been very young then, and only the first shy dream of love beginning to dawn in their eyes that would otherwise have been dull with the monotony of the years. She had looked for him to return, confidently hoped to hear from him when her father died and she was free, but the years had gone by and he had not come. Yet the jewel burned in her soul and gave her something to cherish, and she kept her sweet patience and looked to the great beyond for something everlasting to return out of her own love, something that could not perish and would someday be hers forever. She did not reason it out. She just quietly held its dearness to her soul, along with her faith in God, and her hope in Christ, and her love of her mother. Having these, she somehow managed to bear the little everyday trivialities and look beyond. It gave her a quiet assurance and a gentle sweetness that Harriet Granniss could not penetrate, could not understand; it was the something about her housemate that nettled her beyond all power of control sometimes. She could not stir Emily Dillon beyond a certain point. In many ways Emily was like Harriet’s stubborn son. She called it stupidity. She held them to blame for it, and she nagged them all the more.

Sometimes she caught a look in Emily Dillon’s eyes as if she felt
sorry for her
, and that was most maddening of all.
Sorry for her!
Why should Emily Dillon be sorry for her? Poor simpleminded Emily, who didn’t even know enough to be angry that she had to divide her house with a stranger!

Then there were times when Harriet felt almost jealous at the smile that came into Jud’s eyes when he answered Emily. Jud was so unnecessarily polite and formal with Emily Dillon, almost as if he thought he hadn’t a perfect right in that house. Almost as if it were entirely Emily’s house and he a visitor.

Jud spent a great deal of time studying evenings when he ought to have been out having a good time like other young folks. One was only young once, and Harriet wanted a son she could be proud of, a handsome, dashing fellow with a speedy automobile and many girls following after him. She wanted him to be popular. With all her fierce, determined soul she wanted him to be popular. And she had it against Emily Dillon that she encouraged him to stay at home and study. Sometimes he even went to her special own sitting room and read things to her. He never read to his mother. He knew she would only sneer at him and tell him not to waste his time on such things now, to wait until he was an old man for that; but she felt it in her heart that he went to Emily for sympathy.

So they lived at cross purposes, those three, whom life had strangely joined in one house, and none of them quite understood the others. One would have known, even as early as that summer that Ariel came north, that something was bound to happen to disrupt a household like that.

T
he stir and bustle of the passengers preparing to leave the car roused Ariel from the deep sleep into which she had fallen as soon as the train left Washington.

She rubbed her eyes and looked around in bewilderment, realizing that they must have arrived in Philadelphia, and here was she, but half awake. She passed her hands over her dazed eyes, smoothed back her disheveled hair, and straightened her hat. Stumbling to her feet, she grasped for her satchel in the rack overhead and followed the other passengers up the long platform to the station. She gazed around her in dismay. There seemed so many people, so many, many trains. Her heart beat with almost frightened rhythm, and now that she was here, she shrank inexpressibly from what might be before her. She seemed to be suddenly stripped of any preparation that her heart might have made for the coming interview. It became in a flash so important whether they liked her or not.

She was not surprised that there was nobody at the gate to meet her. It was four hours later than she had promised to come, for the train that had brought her from home to the junction had had engine trouble, and she had missed the morning train from the junction to Washington. There had been three hours to wait and another delay in Washington. It seemed that she had been traveling forever. But she had the address of the library and had been told to come straight there in case Miss Larrabee failed to meet her. Also she knew Miss Larrabee’s home address.

The station was so big it bewildered her, but she saw a large friendly sign reading I
NFORMATION
and went shyly over to the counter to find out how to proceed.

It frightened her to try to get into the trolley cars. They seemed so big and indifferent, and their doors were in such uncertain places. She let several go by while she watched how others did it before she ventured herself.

The way to the library seemed through a maze of traffic. She felt frightened again at the thought of getting out. But when she reached the place and entered the big leather doors into a sort of superquiet, her courage came again, and she marched up to the girl behind the big desk and asked for Miss Larrabee.

“She isn’t here,” answered the other girl. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?” echoed Ariel. “Do you mean she’s gone to the station to meet me? I looked all around where she told me she would be and I didn’t see her. It’s too bad if I kept her waiting so long. My train was very late—”

“Oh no,” said the assistant librarian crisply as if she couldn’t waste the time. “She’s
gone.
Not here anymore.
Gone home!
“

“You don’t mean—not
dead
?” said Ariel, wide eyed with awe. Such phrases were connected with death in her mind.

The librarian laughed.

“Mercy, no! I hope not. She simply isn’t with us anymore. She’s resigned. They’ve appointed a new librarian in her place. She had to go home and take care of her sick mother. She lives away up in Maine somewhere.”

Ariel stood still, growing white to the lips.

“But I don’t understand,” she managed to say. “I’m to be her assistant. She wrote me to come today, and she was to meet me at Broad Street Station at half past twelve. My train was late—”

“Oh, are
you
the one—?” The girl eyed her intently with a kind of indifferent interest. “But she wrote you the very next day. I saw the letter. She was very sorry, but she told you not to come. You see, her mother was taken very sick and her father had just died and she had to go home and stay. She wrote that letter a whole week ago, just as soon as the telegram came.”

Ariel suddenly looked around for a chair and sat weakly down, looking at the other girl with big, appealing eyes.

“I’m sorry,” said the girl. “But didn’t you get her letter?”

“No, I didn’t get the letter,” said Ariel with white, trembling lips. “I—No, I didn’t get any letter.”

“You look tired. Can I get you a drink of water?” asked the girl. She hurried away with a glass and in a moment was back.

Ariel sat staring ahead, but she took the glass and sipped a few drops. The Custer courage was coming to the front.

“Can I do anything for you?” asked the girl. “It must be annoying to have misunderstood.”

“Thank you,” said Ariel, handing back the glass and rising. “I think I shall have to go now. Could you tell me where I could find the new librarian?”

“No,” said the other. “She hasn’t reached the city yet. She’s coming down from New York tomorrow, but it won’t be any use for you to see her. She’s bringing her daughter with her to assist her. She’s a relative of one of the board of directors, and they really made this place for her and her daughter, I suppose, though you needn’t say I said so. I’m not to stay either. I’m only here till they arrive. It’s really tough on you, but you’ll probably find another job soon. It really isn’t Miss Larrabee’s fault, for as I told you I saw her writing the letter. It must be in the mail. Things often get lost in the mail. Or perhaps in her hurry she forgot to mail it—”

But Ariel with a wan smile had thanked her and was walking away, her little head held high, her sunny eyes clouded with trouble, but her lips brave as ever.

The other girl looked after her anxiously, but there seemed nothing she could do, so she went back to the novel she was reading.

Out in the broad, strange street, Ariel attempted to find a car back to the station. There at least she would have a right to sit down and think, and recover from the blow she had received. Here she felt that she could not quite take it in, it was so sudden and so sharp a reversal of things.

During the long car ride back to the station, she found herself saying softly in her heart,
Dear Lord, are You there? Dear Lord, are You there? You said You’d go with me; are You surely there?
“

She got out of the trolley too soon, it appeared, and must walk a block and cross an awful street, so much worse than when she was there before because of the lateness of the hour. There were throngs everywhere, jostling, and trolleys and automobiles. She stood a long time uncertain, trying to make out which way traffic signs read and whether the policeman in the middle of the road really meant her to come when he held up his hand, and then she made a wild dash. It was not that she was stupid, only tired and dazed, and out of her sheltered life, she had never experienced the noise and crush of the hour and place.

It was only a man on a bicycle who knocked her down. The big truck had stopped, and two automobiles had stopped when they saw her coming, for somehow there was something delicate and lovely and appealing about Ariel, something alien to the city in her plain country garb, that made people take care of her. The man on the bicycle was head down, going like a rocket, and Ariel didn’t see him till he was upon her. Then he only grazed her slightly, just enough to throw her off her balance and down upon her knees, and himself full length upon the road.

The traffic officer roared at everybody, swung his sign around to S
TOP,
and bore down upon them. Someone extricated the man and the bicycle, and kind, strong hands lifted Ariel to her feet again. She found herself wondering if it was the Lord or one of His angels. A man picked up the satchel, all burst open with her little white garments flung around the street, but Ariel was too shaken and dazed to realize. Her face was flaming with mortification.

“Can you walk?” roared the traffic officer.

“Oh yes, I think so,” gasped Ariel, trying to smile, and wishing only to get away out of this throng to hide her mortification. To think she should have fallen in the street, and all her own fault the officer had said. He spoke so rudely to her. She was glad her grandmother could not know. He had asked her if she hadn’t seen his sign, and told her all women walked along with their heads down and expected to hold up traffic for half an hour while they meandered across the street. He had scolded her like a naughty child! And there were tears in her eyes. She must not cry in the street with all those people looking. And that was her satchel all broken open, and her toothbrush lying in the road. She could never use it again. And people seeing—! It was awful. Would she ever get away? Would they never get her little things picked up? And how was she to carry them now, with the handle off her bag and a great gash in its side?

The young man who was picking up her things gathered her satchel under his arm. He was big and strong, and he put a hand under her sore, shaken little arm and guided her across to the sidewalk. She was beginning to feel the jar of the fall. Her knee was bruised, and her wrist hurt. Her head was throbbing, and little black specks darted before her eyes. She couldn’t somehow think. The young man seemed to know how it was, for he kept hold of her arm and guided her toward the door of the station.

“Were you going in here?” he asked, and she tried to answer sanely, although she couldn’t remember afterward what she had said.

He guided her toward the elevator and got her up to the waiting room into a seat before he spoke again.

“Do you feel all right now,” he asked from what seemed a long way off, “or would you like me to get you a doctor?”

“Oh no,” she said, rousing at that. “No, I’m all right. I’m just trembling a little yet—” But her voice trailed off and she put her head back and closed her eyes.

The young man summoned a porter and sent for some aromatic ammonia. In a moment more, a glass was at her lips, and she swallowed the dose and then she did sit up and open her eyes, and the color came slowly creeping back into her face.

“I’m so sorry to have made you so much trouble,” she said in her soft, pleasant Southern voice. “I don’t know what made me do like this—”

“You had enough to take anybody’s nerve. Are you sure you are all right now?”

“Yes, thank you.” She smiled, and the man knew that here was a girl he could respect.

He smiled back a big, warm, gentle smile that made her feel he was her friend, yet presumed nothing. She was a Southern girl, used to hospitality, used to trusting people. A girl who had been sheltered phenomenally and was not alert to evil. He saw that she trusted him as a gentleman, and he felt a great yearning to protect her. She in her turn felt that he was the one whom the Lord had sent to guard her.

The young man turned his attention to the dilapidated satchel that he had deposited on the seat beside the girl.

“I’ll just tie this up so it will be safe to travel,” he said in a matter-of-fact way, spreading out the newspaper that was in his pocket and wrapping it around the broken, bulging leather bag.

“Oh, please don’t take all that trouble,” said the girl. “It was an old thing. I’ll have to get a new one.”

“Time enough for that tomorrow when you’ve rested up from the shock,” said the man pleasantly. He was deftly folding the paper and tying it with a string he’d fished out of another pocket.

“I guess this will do for tonight,” he said pleasantly. “Wait, I’ll see if they have a handle at the newsstand.”

He came back in a moment with a wooden handle that he secured to one side of the bundle, and the girl roused from her exhaustion and thanked him with a smile: “I’m sure I don’t know what I should have done if you hadn’t helped me,” she said. “I think I was bewildered.”

“Oh, someone else would have been there if I hadn’t,” said the young man gallantly. “No one would leave a lady in the middle of the street.”

“Not everyone would take so much time and trouble as you have, I’m sure. And besides, I think you saved me from being taken to the hospital. I think I heard that policeman say something about calling an ambulance, and I shouldn’t have liked that.”

“Well, I’m very glad if I’ve helped any. And now what can I do more for you? Shall I put you on your train? Or is there a friend with a car whom I can call up for you?”

“No, thank you,” said Ariel, rousing to her situation, “I haven’t any train, nor any friend. I’m—that is, I don’t know—Well, I’m not sure just what I’m going to do. I’ve got to think. I’ll just sit here a little while and get rested, I think.”

The young man frowned.

“I don’t like to leave you here alone till I’m sure you’re all right,” he said. “I’m not so sure you oughtn’t go to the hospital and let the doctor give you something. You had a hard fall. You must be bruised.”

“Oh, I’m quite all right, thank you,” she said with a wan little smile, but something in the whiteness of her cheek, the languor of her eye, made him reluctant to leave her thus.

“You ought to have something hot to drink right away,” he said suddenly. “Here, come this way.” He picked up the satchel and assisted her to her feet.

“Yes,” she said as if the suggestion were welcome. “But I don’t need to trouble you any further. Just show me where the restaurant is. I can walk quite well alone now.”

He took her arm firmly and guided her through a crowd of people who were hurrying to catch a train, and toward the leather doors of the dining room. “You’re not troubling me,” he said cheerily. “I’m tremendously hungry myself. I had a hard day and scarcely any time for lunch. If you don’t mind, I’ll take a bite myself, and then I can see if you’re able to be left to yourself.”