Brentwood (6 page)

Marjorie was at her side at once, her arms about her, soothing her, putting the hair back from her tired forehead, putting a warm kiss on her cheek.

“Why, you’re cold yet, you poor dear!” she said. “Come into the hall and sit over the register and get your feet warm.”

“No! No, I’m all right,” insisted Betty, raising her head and brushing away her tears. “I just can’t understand it all, everything getting so different all of a sudden. Food in the house and heat and a chance to sit down.”

“But, my dear, you’ve scarcely eaten a thing. Come, let me get you a nice little lunch. Have another sandwich! And here are eggs. I don’t know how good a cook I am, for I haven’t had much chance to practice, but I can scramble eggs beautifully, and the gas is on now.”

Marjorie made Betty sit down and eat.

“Mother said the soup was the best thing she had tasted in weeks,” Betty said as she ate hungrily.

“Have you told her about me yet?” asked Marjorie anxiously.

“No,” said Betty. “I didn’t have a chance yet. I didn’t want to excite her while she was eating. And besides, Father came in and dropped down on the other edge of the bed. He went right off to sleep. And when Mother finished her soup she put her head back and said in a whisper, ‘That was good! Now I’ll go to sleep awhile and then I’ll be all right.’ And they never either of them asked where the things came from! Mother knew Ted had gone out to try and get a few subscriptions for a magazine. She likely thinks he has picked up a few pennies. But I thought it would be better for me to wait till they woke up to tell them about you.”

“Of course!” said Marjorie. “Now, what should we do next? The doctor won’t be here till two o’clock. He had gone to the hospital, but I got him on the phone and he promised to come here right from there. He had an emergency operation this morning. Is there anything to do to get ready for him?”

“There isn’t anything we can do,” said Betty. “I used the last clean sheet when I made up Mother’s bed fresh last night, and I haven’t had any hot water to wash them with since.”

“Well, if the sheets were clean last night, they ought to be all right. Anyway, I guess it’s more important that they both should have a good sleep than that the bed should look stylish and unrumpled. Let’s bend our energies toward getting everything ready for a comfortable dinner. But first, tell me about us, just a word or two more. You spoke of Ted. Is he our brother?”

“Of course. Hadn’t you heard of him, either? He’s almost seventeen, and he’s a dear. I don’t know what we would have done while Father was sick if it hadn’t been for Ted. He worked early and late, just like a man. Like two men! He got a job in a grocery, and he got up before daylight and delivered papers, and then he worked from eight in the morning till sometimes nine at night. He’s out now hunting for some kind of a job. And he hasn’t had much to eat for a day and a half. He wouldn’t take it away from us. He had a real desperate look on his face when he went away this morning. I wish he would come back and get something to eat. But he won’t come until he finds something.”

“Oh,” said Marjorie, “couldn’t I go out and find him? Or couldn’t you, and let me stay here and look after things? It wouldn’t do any good for me to go, of course, because I wouldn’t know him. But I could look after Father and Mother if worst came to worst. I could perhaps get away with playing I’m you if I put on one of your dresses. I’m a pretty good nurse, you know.”

Betty’s eyes filled with tears, but she smiled through them and shook her head.

“I wouldn’t know where to find Ted. He goes all over the city when he gets desperate. He’ll come pretty soon perhaps, because he said if he couldn’t find something else this morning he’d come back and get that chair and take it to the pawnbroker. He felt we ought to have some coal as soon as possible, but he hated to give up the last chair.”

“Oh, my dear!” said Marjorie, her eyes clouded with tears of sympathy. “Oh, if I had only known sooner!”

“Oh, don’t you cry!” said Betty. “You’ve come, and I can’t tell you how wonderful it is just to have it warm here again and have something to eat, and not be frightened about Mother and Father. That sounds awfully sordid, I know. But those things had to come first. And you don’t realize how awful it’s been. I’m sure I’ll love you afterward for yourself, but just now I can’t help being thankful for the things you’ve done. Maybe I can make you understand sometime when I’m not so tired. But you see, I’ve hated you and blamed you for being better than we were for so long! I see now it wasn’t fair to you. You couldn’t help what they did to you when you were a baby, of course. Only I never dreamed they wouldn’t tell you anything about us. Mother said Mrs. Wetherill had said they would tell you you were adopted, and I supposed, of course, you knew and didn’t care to have anything to do with us.”

“I don’t think Mrs. Wetherill knew much about you either,” said Marjorie slowly, thoughtfully. “Not till Mother came to see her. And she never told me about that at all. She just left a letter. I think she couldn’t get courage to talk with me about it when she knew she was going to leave me so soon. You see, when I was little, they just told me they had picked me out from all the babies in the world to be theirs, and I was more to them than if I had even been born to them. That satisfied me when I was small, but as I got older and went to school and heard more about adoption, I began to wonder why my parents had been willing to give me up. It seemed very heartless of them. But when I asked more questions about them, I got very little satisfaction, just that somebody had been sick and they couldn’t afford to keep me. So I confess I grew up feeling rather hard toward my own parents. Oh, I was having a good time, of course, and not a hardship in the world, everything money could buy heaped upon me, but sometimes I got a little depressed or sentimental or something, and felt that I had been cheated by my own folks.

“You aren’t the only one, Betty, that had hard feelings! I sometimes felt like a castaway. My own mother being willing to give me up when I was tiny and helpless. And, of course, I loved Mrs. Wetherill all the more fiercely in consequence because she had come to my rescue. There! That’s the way it looked to me! Now I guess we’re somewhat even, and perhaps we can understand each other better. Anyhow, it wasn’t any of it our fault.”

“I see,” said Betty sadly. “I was all wrong, of course. But I guess that was what made Mother suffer so, thinking she had let you go. She has cried and cried over that. Whenever she wasn’t well, she would cry all night. She said Mr. Wetherill came to her when she was weak and sick and didn’t realize fully what she was doing. Father was threatened with tuberculosis. He had had lung fever, and the doctor said he simply must get away from the office and out into the open for a few years, and Mr. Wetherill promised to put him on a farm and start him out, with the privilege of buying the farm if he wanted to. He also gave them quite a sum of money to have me treated. It seems I wasn’t very strong and had to be under a specialist for a long time. They said I wouldn’t live if I didn’t have special treatment.”

Betty’s eyes grew stormy with bitterness.

“I used to wish sometimes they had let me die. I thought Mother didn’t love me at all, she mourned for you so much.”

“Oh,
my dear
!” said Marjorie, coming close and putting her arms about her sister. “My dear! I think we are going to love each other a lot!”

It was very still in the little dreary kitchen for a minute while the two sisters held each other close. Then Betty lifted her head.

“I’m glad you’ve come, anyway!” she said. “You’ve been wonderful already. And I’m glad for Mother that she needn’t fret for what she did anymore. As soon as the doctor’s been here, I want to tell her. It will cure her just to know you are here. I know it will.”

“Well, you’d better ask the doctor if it won’t excite her too much. There! Isn’t that the door? Perhaps he’s come! But it isn’t quite two o’clock!”

Betty hurried to answer the knock, and Marjorie, lingering in the kitchen, saw through the crack of the door that it was the doctor. Betty took him upstairs at once, and Marjorie stood for a minute by the kitchen window looking out, staring at the minute frozen backyard and its dreary surroundings, wondering if her mother were very sick, wondering at herself that she cared so much already for a mother whom she had not yet seen. And this dear, fierce sister seemed already another self. And yet, they had lived such different lives! Marjorie felt almost ashamed of her own sheltered existence. It seemed terrible to think of her leisurely, butterfly life, when everything Betty had had seemed to have been gotten by the hardest. Well, perhaps not all the time. She had spoken as if there were times when they had nice things. But the last few months must have been simply terrible! If she had only known sooner! If she might only have saved her mother and father in their distress. Oh, suppose it should be too late for either of them? She recalled the ghastly look of her father as he stumbled into the hall a little while ago with that great burden in his arms. How white and desperate he looked. How his voice shook as he said he must get it warm for the mother! Her heart thrilled at the desperate love in his voice. It was so grand to have them love one another that way! Even through trials and adversity!

Then she remembered the pantry, which she had been putting to rights, setting the supplies up in an orderly manner on the shelves. She might as well get it done before her sister got back. It was better to be doing something than just standing there waiting to know what the doctor said.

She dampened a cloth she found, wiped off the shelves, and set about putting things away systematically. She stepped on a box to reach the top shelf, and there she discovered a handleless cracked cup with little tickets in it. Were they milk tickets or what? She wiped off the shelf, stepped down with the cup in her hand, and stood there examining the bits of paper. Each one had something written on it.

“Six plain sterling spoons,” one said. “One Brussels carpet,” said another. “Three upholstered chairs.”

Marjorie stared at them in dismay as she realized what these bits of paper must be. They were pawn tickets! She had never seen pawn tickets before. They represented the downfall of a home! A precious home where these her own flesh and blood had lived!

She went on with the tickets. “One baby crib. Six dining room chairs.”

And now she noticed there was a date on each one and a price. Was that all they got for each of those articles? How pitifully little in exchange for surrendering their household necessities! “Two double blankets!” And they had been cold! Her mother was threatened with pneumonia—perhaps more than threatened! She went on with the tickets. “One wrist watch. Fifty cents.”

She stood studying them, trying to make a rough estimate of the entire amount loaned for all those articles, when suddenly she heard the kitchen door open and a boy’s voice.

“What’s the idea, Betts, of having the cellar window open? Did you think it was milder out than in?”

And then as the door shut behind him:

“Gosh! You’ve got a fire! What did you do? Burn up our only chair? That’s too bad. I found a place where they would pay sixty cents for it, since it’s almost new!”

Marjorie turned, startled, letting the pawn tickets fall back into the cup, and facing him, not realizing that she still held the cup in her hands.

“Gee, but it feels good in here, anyway! But how did you manage a fire? There wasn’t even a match! Did Dad—?” And then he turned and looked her straight in the face!

S
he saw a tall boy, lean and wiry, with a shock of red hair and big gray eyes that had green lights in them. Under the mahogany brows and lashes they looked enormous, and they were weary, haunted eyes that seemed to have been perpetually puzzling out some anxious problem. There were shadows under them, too, and he looked too utterly worn for one of his age.

He stared at her first with a bewildered gaze, like one who had come in out of the sun and could not rightly see in the dimmer light. He put up his hand and passed it over his eyes, and then his gaze grew puzzled, and then frightened, almost as if he were afraid his sight had played him a trick. Marjorie began to sense what he was feeling and spoke quickly.

“You are Ted, aren’t you?” She did not know how much her voice was like Betty’s, only for that rich silken note that a luxurious surrounding had given her, and the boy was still more startled. He stiffened visibly, realizing that he was in the presence of a stranger.

The light of the pantry window was behind Marjorie’s head which made the likeness to Betty still more elusive.

“Yes?” he said coldly, lifting his head a trifle, with a gesture that in a man would have been called haughty. He was alert, ready to resent the intrusion of a stranger into their private misery.

Then he saw the cup in her hand, and putting down the bucket of coal he had picked from the dump, he stepped over and took the cup possessively.

“That wouldn’t interest you,” he said coldly, reprovingly.

“Ted!” said Marjorie impulsively, “I’m your sister! Don’t speak to me that way!”

“My sister!” said Ted scornfully. “Well, I can’t help it if you are, that doesn’t give you a right to pry into our private affairs, does it?”

An angry flush had stolen over the boy’s lean cheeks, and his eyes were hard as steel.

“Oh, please don’t!” said Marjorie, covering her face with her hands. “I wasn’t prying. I was trying to help!”

“Well, we don’t need your help!” said the boy, with young scorn in his eyes, “and it would be much better if you were to go back wherever you came from. This wasn’t a very good time to select to visit us. We’ve got sickness in the house, and we’ve been unfortunate!”

“Oh, I know!” moaned Marjorie, “but you see, I didn’t know anything about you till three or four days ago. I didn’t even know I had a brother! But now I’ve come, and I want to help.”

“Well, I don’t think there is anything you can do,” he said icily. “We’ll manage somehow by ourselves. You might leave your address and we can let you know when things are more prosperous, and then you could come and see Mother. Just at present it wouldn’t be possible for us to have visitors.”