Spice Box (16 page)

And then she heard the doorbell ring, and she hurried down to meet Ronald and the quiet-eyed, young doctor.

The boy and Martha stood very still while the doctor made his examination, but at last it was over.

“I think there is still life here,” said the doctor, turning to Martha, “but we shall have to work fast. May I have a glass of water and a spoon? Hot water, have you? Boy, you go back to my office and get the little black case on my desk. I need something from it. Miss Spicer, have you a hot water bottle?”

Gravely, quietly, swiftly they obeyed orders. Ronald was back from the office almost in no time and busied himself in bringing hot water and running errands. And yet, with their best efforts, it was a full half hour before they were rewarded by hearing a soft sigh from the sleeper, and it was a full hour before she opened her eyes and looked at them with a puzzled expression, as if she had come back from another world, then dropped the lids slowly shut again and went on sleeping. But her breath was coming now, regularly and normally. The doctor whispered a few directions about feeding her. It was some time later that he turned away from her again and said with a sigh of satisfaction, “I think she will be all right now, but that was a close call. I thought for a few minutes there that it was no use, she was too far gone, but she had youth in her favor. She must have been running on the edge of things for a long time, and can’t have been eating very much.”

“Yes,” said Martha, “I’m afraid so. She didn’t tell me much last night, but I think she is a lady, suddenly thrown of her own resources. She lost her job and went walking all over after another without taking time or much money from her small store to eat.”

Martha was surprised to find her own voice was trembling, and she felt all unnerved. The sudden relief from suspense had left her feeling weak all at once.

“Well, she’s evidently been overtaxing her strength tremendously,” said the doctor. “Ronald tells me he saw her nearly fall in the street. It’s been loss of sleep and lack of nutrition.”

“Yes,” said Martha, “she told me last night that there were always railroad stations one could sit in all night and sleep.”

“Yes, I guess that has been the tale,” said the doctor sorrowfully. “She almost finished herself. But she’s young. I think she’ll pull through now. It was good of you to look after her. But let me know if she seems to be sinking again. She needs good food and lots of sleep. Don’t hesitate to call me at any time, day or night. I’m just around the corner, you know. Ronald will bring me word. Of course you understand I make no charge for a case like this.”

“Oh!” said Martha, strange tears springing into her eyes, and feeling as if he had done her a personal favor. “Oh, that is good of you. But I’m looking after her, you know. I was the one who sent for you.”

“Yes? But this is part of my job, you see. Just call me whenever you need me, and in any case I’ll look in again after lunch. I want to make sure that pulse keeps steady.”

“I’ll be back after a bit,” said Ronald, following the doctor back down the stairs. There was a comfortable assurance in his voice, and Martha turned back to the room to find the forgotten Ernestine lunching calmly off the stranger’s breakfast. Ernestine thought there had been enough fuss made over that tiresome girl who lay in bed at this late hour of the morning, and if nobody wanted that toast and egg and glass of milk, she did. It was time she took things into her own paws.

The rest of the day Ernestine sat apart with an offended air. Things hadn’t gone her way at all, and she was faint and deeply jealous. She had been summarily swept off the stranger’s bed and sent downstairs, and even Ronald hadn’t had time to pat her. She tucked up her fur collar, blinked dismally, and forgot to wind up her music box. Life had taken on a strange aloofness, and everything seemed to center in that dark guest room upstairs.

When Ronald came back Martha asked him to go to the grocery store for her, and then they had a little talk about the architect and his family.

“He’s tickled to death to think he’s got the job,” said the boy. “He’s been wanting to send his wife and the kid to the shore. Doc said they oughtta go right off. Doc wanted to lend him the money, but he couldn’t see that. But Doc’s a good sport. So now Bill Roberts thinks if you are pleased with his plans, he can begin work right off and maybe they can go in three or four weeks.”

“But they ought not to wait so long,” said Martha. “This is just lovely weather and the child ought to be out in it. Why don’t they go at once? I could let him have a little money in advance.”

“Gee! Could ya? Maybe he’d take it that way.”

“Have they any idea where they want to go and how much it will cost?” Martha’s business training came to the front at once.

“Well, he was asking me about a place where they are going to have a street picnic next Monday,” said Ronald meditatively. “He said he heard there were good places to board cheap down there. He thought maybe I was going down Monday with the rest and maybe I’d look him up a place. But—I
ain’t
,” the boy added, a sullen cloud coming over the brightness of his face.

“Oh, why aren’t you going?” asked Martha innocently.

“Couldn’t work it this time,” said Ronald evasively.

“You would like to go?”

“You bet I would, but Dad don’t see it that way. Costs too much.”

“That’s too bad. I’m sorry,” said Martha.

“Aw, I don’t mind,” said Ronald, looking down indifferently. “Well, I gotta beat it! I’ll be back again after a while. So long!” And he was gone before she could say another word.

When he came back the next time she was ready for him.

“Ronald, I’ve been thinking. I can’t bear the idea of that baby waiting till I get the house fixed over before he goes to the seashore. Besides, if this girl is going to be sick for a while, that will delay the work, too. I’ve decided to suggest that he go next week, take his family, and stay a week or ten days himself with them. They’ll need him if they are to get the kind of rest they ought to have. I can advance him some money on the job, you know, and he can be working out the plans while he is a way. He’ll do better work if his mind is set at rest about his child, and I shall be better satisfied in every way. After they are comfortably settled down there he can run back every other day and attend to anything up here that needs him, or if the girl gets well enough he can start his men to work on the house and keep his wife and child down at the shore a little longer. Do you think that would please him?”

“Oh boy! I should think it oughtta! That’d be great!”

His eyes were shining for the woman who could work out and propose such a noble scheme for the good of humanity. She was the first one of her kind he had met. And indeed, she was a surprise to herself as the joy of her unselfish thought welled up in her heart and flooded her soul. She hadn’t known that the giving of a little kindness would be like this, bringing its own reward in joy even before the act was accomplished. Why hadn’t she done things like this before? She had often had it in her power but had always been obsessed by the idea that the world owed
her
all she could get out of it and everyone less fortunate than herself was trying to cheat her out of her rights. What had changed her?

“Then, how about this?” she asked. “I’d like to send you on ahead to find a good boarding place at a reasonable rate for them. He probably couldn’t be persuaded to go unless everything was all mapped out for him. I should think this time of year one could get a boarding place for a very low price. Would you be able to go down to the shore for a day and look around and see what could be done? How about that place you were mentioning this morning? You said he asked about it. I suppose that would please him as well as any place, and you have heard it is nice, you say. Perhaps you would find it easier to look up places. Do you think your father would object to your going? I would pay your fare, of course, and pay you for your day’s work. And of course it wouldn’t take all day to find a place, and you would get a little fun by the way.”

The boy’s face was all sparkles of delight. His eyes grew larger and larger. And she was offering him money for a day like that!

“Gee!” he breathed as if he could hardly believe his ears. “D’ya mean it!
Sure
I’d go. Pa wouldn’t even know I’d gone. He don’t care what becomes of me, only so I don’t cost him nothing. But you wouldn’t need to
pay
me besides. It would be great just to go. If I was to go Monday I could get the round-trip for a dollar, along with the excursionists, you know.”

“Go Monday, by all means,” said wily Martha, trying not to show her delight that she had succeeded in getting him off on that picnic after all. “But of
course
I shall pay you for the day. You will need some spending money, too, and what I want you to do will take a good deal of your time, so you won’t have as much fun as you would if you just went with the others. Besides, you will need something for your meals. I will pay you for the day besides your fare and meals. Will that be all right?”

“
Swell!”
said Ronald, overwhelmed. “Too much! Oh boy!” He turned away to hide his emotion.

As she watched the sturdy young shoulders and the fine strong boy-profile against the fading evening light from the window, Martha’s heart was filled with a strange new emotion. A sense of what it would have been to have been his mother, and have a right to give him things and receive his affection, came to her in hungry boundings of her heart. She was half afraid of her own emotion and turned away to rattle some dishes she was putting on the table, to hide her own feelings. So, they had silence between them for a full minute, like two boys. They were as far apart as two human beings could well be and yet were in many ways much alike, this gray-haired lonely woman and this boy of fifteen breezy years.

Then Martha turned her back with her ordinary tone of voice and said almost coldly: “Well then, that’s fixed, and you can go Monday morning. I’ll depend on you to find a suitable place as reasonably as possible. It had better be near to the beach, and you better get your dinner there and see if the eating is good. I’ll maybe want to send this girl down for a few days later, so you might ask what it would be for her in a room by herself in case she needs to go.”

Ronald accepted this astonishing statement calmly, but his eyes shone. It almost seemed to him as if God must have come to earth to work through a mere woman and do some of the things that ought to be done. He drew a deep sigh of wonder and awe.

“Sure! I’ll find a dandy place! You leave it to me!” he said with a swagger.

It seemed as if he was in a hurry to go then, for he did not even notice the cat, who hovered apathetically about his feet. He left the kitchen door ajar in his haste, and it slowly swung back. Martha was making beef broth at the moment and did not notice, until she heard scrambling over the fence and the neighboring kitchen door flung open, followed by a clear young voice.

“Ma, have I got a clean shirt? I’m going off early Monday morning on a business trip—be gone all day, and I gotta have a clean shirt! If I ain’t got one, I gotta wash one
now
!”

The next kitchen door shut suddenly on a surprised voice of remonstrance, and Martha, pouring her beef broth into a delicate china cup, smiled to herself over the working out of her scheme. Ronald was to have his picnic, and he had never suspected that that was why she got up this “business trip.” Somehow that made her happier than ever she had been when she made a good business deal at the store.

She cast a look of passing anxiety toward the neighbor’s house as she shut her own kitchen door. Was there any possibility that Ronald would have trouble at home in getting his parents’ consent to her plan? Then the look on the boy’s face as he said his father didn’t care what he did if he didn’t have to pay for it, came back to her and she felt reassured.

She had a sudden, fierce longing to have that boy for her own, to educate and uplift him and watch him develop. Then in the dusky kitchen she smiled at herself to realize how her own point of view had changed during the past week. Here, for instance, she was carrying a cup of hot beef broth to an utter stranger who lay in her guest room bed too weak and sick even to tell her own name. A week ago she would have considered this an imposition on a respectable woman and would have likely sent for the police to get an ambulance and take the girl to a hospital. And all this difference had been brought about by that boy! It certainly was strange!

After supper Martha sat down in the parlor near to the hall door, where she could easily hear every sound from above, and looked about her. Life seemed to have taken on an entire revolution during the last twenty-four hours. Great changes were impending, the very walls about her thrilling with the idea of change. In her mind’s eye she could already see bay windows and stairs with landings.

And upstairs in her guest room was that nameless stranger sleeping, having partaken of her beef broth with disinterested submission and then closed her eyes. Her heart thrilled that the girl was getting better and was likely to live. She wanted her to get well. She wanted to see her beautiful eyes open and sparkle, and color come in her pretty oval cheeks. She had been praying all day for her recovery, and sitting here alone she bowed her head and prayed again. And once she’d begun she found a great many other things to pray about. She wanted the boy to have a good time on his picnic, to be successful in finding a nice, cheap boardinghouse, and return in safety. She wanted the architect to be able to fix her house at a price she could afford and to be willing to accept some of his pay beforehand so that he could take his wife and child to the shore.

She prayed so long that Ernestine got worried and sprang up in her lap to see what was the matter. And being taken in gentle arms, snuggled down contentedly and set her music box to rumbling.
After all
, thought Ernestine,
there were compensations, even if one could not understand all the actions of people.

And then Martha got to wondering if she, just plain Martha Spicer, who had never really been much of a Christian, had a
right
to ask for all those material things? Whereupon she bowed her head again and added to her prayers that she might be made into the kind of woman that the Lord desired her to be, to fulfill His purpose for her life.