Enchanted Spring (13 page)

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.

“Sure you know the way, Minnie?”

“Oh, sure, Doc — I used to go through the woods fer Ma ‘fore Jake cut off our credit,” she answered importantly.

“Run along, then.”

Carey and the child went out into the beauty of the moon-silvered night against which the squalor and destitution of this ugly little house seemed a profanation.

Martin’s filling station was tucked in the fork of two heavily travelled highways. Besides the two gasoline pumps and the racks of oil outside, the small building contained a stock of groceries, bread, pies, and cakes. Carey selected swiftly, bought two quarts of milk while Minnie stood by, her eyes enormous in her small white face; and then Carey sent the little car hurrying over the bumpy back-road to the house in the hollow.

The baby’s wailing had died away to a faint whimper by the time Carey, under Joel’s instructions, had sterilized his bottle and filled it with warm milk. (“I gave him a sugar-rag yestiddy and the day before,” Minnie had explained simply, “ ‘cause that was all we had.”) Meanwhile, Minnie had cooked a great pan of oatmeal and the children were gathered about the table with broken bowls and chipped mugs, and the workmanlike way they ploughed into the hot, strengthening food was at once appalling and heartening.

Joel came to the door of the sickroom just as Carey lifted the exhausted baby, curved her arm about his small body and held the bottle to his mouth. He caught it with a small, animal-like gurgling, choked, then began drinking it greedily.

“You poor scrap,” said Carey, tears in her eyes, her heart aching at the thought that anything so tiny, so new to life, should have to know suffering. “Never mind — there won’t be any more of this sort of thing — not while I’m around.”

She looked up suddenly to see Joel in the doorway, studying her curiously, that oddly intent look in his eyes. And something that Carey saw in his eyes lifted the very heart in her breast so that speech was impossible. Joel drew a long breath, turned and went back into the room where the sick woman lay.

Fed to repletion, the baby relaxed and slept the sleep of complete exhaustion. Carey put him back in his wooden box and turned to the other children who had taken the first sharp edge from their appetites and were now studying her with solemn eyes.

“It sure was swell of you, lady, to feed us,” said Minnie gravely. “An’ we ‘preciate it.” She was very formal and polite in expressing her gratitude.

“You’re entirely welcome, Minnie,” said Carey, deeply touched. “And now — what do you say that we put the children to bed? Be a good idea, don’t you think?”

“I reckon it would,” agreed Minnie. “I knowed there wasn’t no use makin’ ‘em go to bed hungry — they’d just holler all night.”

She turned severely to the younger children and said in a tone of authority, “You young uns — scoot to bed! You hear me?”

The children moved obediently to her command. There was a pile of quilts, ragged and unutterably forlorn-looking, in a corner. The children huddled there, gathering close together so that they might share that inadequate space.

“But, Minnie,” Carey said swiftly, “without even bathing?”

“You mean they ought to wash their faces and their feet ‘fore they go to bed?” demanded Minnie. “But, gosh, Miss Carey, they’ll just get dirty again.”

“I know, Minnie — but then they’ll just have to wash again,” Carey said firmly.

For a moment she and Minnie faced each other. And it was Carey who gave in.

“Let it go this time, Minnie. After all, it seems kind of silly — all that washing — under the circumstances.”

“It sure does,” Minnie agreed firmly. “Especially when you have to tote water nearly a mile from the spring.”

“Suppose you scamper along to bed, too, Minnie. I’ll stay here and keep the baby company.”

“Ma’s too sick for me to get in bed with her,” protested Minnie. “Me and Susie, the littlest one, sleeps with her.”

She indicated a small girl tucked into the pallet-bed with the boys. She hesitated and then she asked awkwardly, obviously fighting her tears, which would be a sign of weakness when her code demanded the utmost strength:

“Miss Carey, is Ma goin’ to die?”

There was such stark agony, such gripping fear in the child’s voice that Carey felt her own throat tighten as she put out her arms and drew her close.

“Of course not, Minnie — not with Dr. Joel looking after her. Dr. Joel will see to that, so you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Minnie hid her small face against Carey’s shoulder for a moment before she said huskily, “Poor Ma’s had a tough time of it — I just don’t know any reason why she’d
want
to live — ’cept we couldn’t get along without her. She’s — she’s — pretty swell, Ma is.”

“I know she is, Minnie — and I know she’s proud of her babies!” said Carey, and made no effort to check her tears. Her arms tightened about the child. “She’s going to be all right and things are going to be better for you all — you just wait and see.”

Minnie hesitated, and now there was a strange new shadow on her face as she blurted out, “You — you ain’t gonna try to find Pa, are you?”

“Don’t you want us to find him?”

“Hell, no!”
It came with such startling vigor that Carey jumped, staring at the child with wide, startled eyes.

“Minnie!” she gasped. “You mustn’t say such awful things!”

“Nobody can say nothin’ awful enough about Pa. He — he’s a devil, Miss Carey. He used to beat Ma somethin’ terrible — just ‘cause she didn’t want him to whale the tar out of us. He beat Jimmy so hard one night that it was a year before Jimmy could walk again.”

“The man must be a monster,” Carey said in horror.

“He’s worse’n that,” agreed Minnie. “Soon as I growed up enough, I aimed to kill him. Only he went off before I could get that big.”

Carey shivered. “Don’t think about him anymore now, Minnie. Just tuck yourself up in that chair over there and catch forty winks. And in the morning there’ll be some changes around here, I promise you!”

“An’ you won’t let him come back — not even if he wants to?” Minnie pleaded for reassurance.

“Not even if he wants to a thousand times over. We’ll have him arrested and put in prison if he tries it!” Carey promised recklessly.

Carey got the child tucked as comfortably as she could in a broken-springed old chair, with another chair for her feet. And then she went to the door of the bedroom and peeped in.

Joel, beside the bed, looked up at her and nodded. He rose and came quietly out of the room, closing the door behind him, rolling down his sleeves, fastening his cuffs. “It was a near thing, but she’s out of danger now — poor devil! I feel a little guilty, though.”

“Guilty because you saved her life? Oh, Joel, that’s terrible!”

Joel looked swiftly about the room and shrugged. “As long as the parents are alive, children will not be accepted into the orphanages,” he explained. “And you’d be surprised how hard it is for a woman with six children, one of them a tiny infant, to earn a living for herself and the babies.”

“If — if you hadn’t come — the children would have gone to an orphanage?”

Joel nodded. “That’s why she did it. It was the only thing she could think of to keep them from starving to death.”

CAREY was lying in the old hammock slung between two live-oak trees at the head of the garden path when Margaret came out to her. Margaret was looking fresh and crisp and almost pretty in a yellow shantung frock, a wide-brimmed hat shading her plump face.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to go with me to the Ladies’ Aid meeting, Carey?” she suggested with something approaching diffidence.

“Ladies’ Aid? Do I know anything about it?”

“Do you mean, were you invited? Of course — you’ve had a standing invitation for ages,” Margaret answered lightly. “I told Mrs. Burns I wasn’t sure you would come, but that I’d tell you about it.”

“That would be an organization of Midvale’s most estimable and representative ladies, I wouldn’t doubt?” suggested Carey with a deepening interest that made Margaret look at her almost warily.

“It would indeed.”

“Then I’ll go. Wait two minutes while I wash my face and hands and put on something more respectable than slacks and a shirt that’s seen its best days!” Carey sped to the house.

A little later, driving the sturdy, ancient car that Margaret had managed to achieve before all her money was gone on remodelling and refurnishing, they set out.

“I’m glad, Carey, that you don’t mind about your father and me now,” Margaret said almost humbly. “That is,
if
you don’t mind. Or were you just being decent, for his sake? We are going to be married, you know.”

Carey laughed. “By this time you should know me well enough to know I never pull my punches. Believe it or not, I’m tickled pink that you and Dad are going to be happy together. You’ve both been lonely for so long.”

“I’ve loved him so long I can’t believe, even yet, that anything so utterly glorious could happen as for him to love me and want to marry me.”

“To tell you the truth, Margaret, I think a great deal of the luck is on Dad’s side,” Carey acknowledged quite sincerely.

They smiled at each other, friendly, warm and content in this feeling of mutual understanding. Soon they reached the pleasant, old-fashioned house set well back from the dusty road, where several cars indicated that a meeting of some sort was in progress.

Mrs. Burns, stout, friendly, very attractive, welcomed them with such warm hospitality that Carey’s faint uneasiness vanished. Carey sat quietly by while the business of the meeting was disposed of; the singing of a couple of hymns, reading of the minutes of the past meeting, and the serving of refreshments. Later, there was an informal interlude during which Mrs. Burns said lightly:

“Well, girls, has anyone any suggestions as to a worthy aim for our organization — aside, of course, from our work for the church?”

There were several suggestions, and then Carey said, “May I make a suggestion?”

“Of course, my dear. We shall be so happy to hear you,” answered Mrs. Burns.

Carey began quietly, but as she went on with the account of Liz Ponder, she forgot to be self-conscious, or to choose her words very carefully. She was seeing again that little group of starving, frightened children, the woman who had chosen to die that her children might live.

When she had finished, the women looked at each other uncomfortably and Mrs. Burns said, hesitantly, “It’s very fine of you, Carey, to have looked after Mrs. Ponders and the children. But — well, after all, the church funds are so scanty and there are so many places where they simply
have
to go — and then of course we
do
have the welfare agencies and organized charities, you know.”

“I’m not asking anybody to contribute any money,” Carey said eagerly. “I’ve thought it all out. I know none of us have any money to spare. Dad and I are probably the most poverty-stricken people in town, and so I wouldn’t dare suggest that. It’s only that — well, I know that there’s scarcely a time when we can’t scrape up some little thing. Perhaps you have a chicken, maybe some eggs, a quart of milk, more potatoes than you need. I’ve learned that on farms, people think little of such things and yet — sometimes they mean the difference between life and death. And if it happened that everybody had potatoes and the folks who need help couldn’t use them, we could sell them or trade them for things we did need. My idea would be to have a sort of collection depot; a place where anybody who had anything to spare, from an egg to a side of bacon or a sack of flour, could bring it and know that it would go straight to someone who needed it desperately.”