Brentwood

by Grace Livingston Hill

“Oh, but we aren’t going to have any Chwistmas at our house,” said the little girl sadly. “Betty said we wouldn’t. Muvver was going to do sompin about it, but she got sick, and so she can’t. So we won’t have any.”

  “Well, perhaps Betty will find she was mistaken,” said Marjorie. “Besides, Muvver is getting better, we hope.”

  “Oh, is she?” The little girl raised her head with a light of hope in her eyes. And then suddenly her face clouded again.

  “Do Sunny and I haveta go to the nursewy today?”

  “Oh, no,” said Marjorie. “We have a nice fire here now, and you can stay home.”

  “We don’t liketa go ta the nursewy,” said Bonnie wearily. “It smells of onions, and they said my muvver was high-hat because we had boots on to keep our feet dwy.”

  “Well, now, shall we have our face washed and get fixed up nicely for the doctor?”

  And so Marjorie made the little girl fresh and sweet, brushed out the pretty curls, and put her own pretty pink apron about the child’s shoulders, to her infinite delight. Then she made the room somehow look lovely, even with the old shabby furniture and the faded wallpaper. Marjorie had a knack at doing things like that. Presently they heard the doctor coming upon the porch, and Betty in the slim blue dress went to open the door, her hair a little gold flame of light about her shapely head. Marjorie, standing back in the tiny parlor almost out of view, had time to notice the quick look of interest in the doctor’s face as he took account of the exceedingly pretty girl who was meeting him, and the little flush of rose that crept up into Betty’s cheeks as she met his gaze.

  Mr. Gay came down the stairs himself with the doctor, walking straight and a bit proudly.

  “Yes, I think she’s decidedly better,” the doctor was saying. “I think another day or so will clear up that fever and then she can begin to sit up a little, but I would be exceedingly careful. If you want her down for Christmas, she’d better go slowly. And I’ll say the same thing for you, Mr. Gay. You know you are a bit run-down, and in a condition like that, a man is open to anything that is going about. If I were you I’d keep in the house for two or three days yet. It’s beginning to snow, and I think we’re in for a big storm. The atmosphere is too damp for you to be out in it till that soreness in your chest is all gone.”

  Then the doctor turned and looked keenly at Marjorie.

  “Oh, you’re the new sister, aren’t you?” he said pleasantly. “Aren’t you twins? You look so very much alike. I doubt if I could have told you apart if I hadn’t met Miss Betty before several times.”

  Marjorie, looking up, caught a bright flame of color on Betty’s face and thought how pretty she looked in the new dress. She wondered in passing if this nice, pleasant doctor was interested in her sister.

  Then she turned to answer the questions about Bonnie.

  It was when the doctor had closed his medicine case and was just going toward the door that silent little Bonnie suddenly sat up and spoke.

  “They’re having awful good things to eat. Can’t I have any of them? I’m awful hungwy!”

  They all laughed, and the doctor turned sympathetically toward the little girl.

  “You surely can,” he said. “You tell those two sisters of yours to feed you well. How about some cereal? Do you like cereal?”

  Bonnie nodded.

  “Wif cream,” she said aggrievedly. “They had it for bweakfast and they didn’t give me any. Just owange juice. It was good, but I wanted ceweal too, wif cweam and sugar.”

  “I guess you are really better, young lady. All right. Give her some cereal, and if she continues to improve, she might have a baked potato for dinner, and a poached egg. Tomorrow she can have chops.”

  “A whole chop for me?” said Bonnie, with wide eyes. “Won’t that be too ’spensive?”

  “Of course not,” spoke up Marjorie. “Oh, we’re going to have a good time, girlie.”

  Betty lingered a moment at the door talking with the doctor, asking him particularly about her mother’s diet and medicine, and the young doctor looked at her approvingly and smiled as he finally went out.

  Then came Ted with a big basket from the store and the overcoat over his arm.

  “It’s a chicken,” said Ted succinctly as he handed over the basket. “There’s two of them. I thought Mother ought to have chicken broth.”

  “Oh, you extravagant boy!” said Betty, aghast.

  “That’s nice, Ted,” said Marjorie, “be as extravagant as you want to. Mother needs everything nice, and so do the rest of you, and chicken will be good for the children, too. I’m so glad you got it!”

  Then the real business of the day began, Betty and Marjorie settling down to plan the meals, Betty trying to save, and Marjorie determined to spend for her dear new family.

  Chapter 9

  For two days the girls had their hands full caring for the invalids, getting the house in some sort of order, and doing the necessary cooking and cleaning in a household that had been near to being cleaned out entirely. But by the third day the invalids were decidedly better. Bonnie was dressed and playing with Sunny, or tagging after her two sisters, pretending to help a little.

  The mother was allowed to sit up against her pillows for an hour at a time and to have cheerful little visits from her family a few minutes at a time, while the father hovered over her and called time up so that she wouldn’t get exhausted. It was rare, his care of her. They were like two lovers, Marjorie thought as she watched them shyly. She was trying to work out her new relationship and understand just what her absence had meant to them. Precious little times together, Marjorie and her mother had, too, although both of them were shy, and though they felt deeply they could not yet bring themselves to tell all they had felt.

  Meanwhile it had been snowing hard for two days, and Ted had been absent most of the time. He came home the first night with a new snow shovel. Snow was a windfall for Ted. He shoveled snow early and late, and was proud to bring home a pocket full of dollars all his own. But he said very little about it. He wasn’t a boy who talked much about himself or his doings. It was only by chance that they found out he had been shoveling snow. It was Bud, as usual, who let it out.

  They discovered Bud working away at their own walk with the heavy coal shovel from the cellar, and Marjorie gave him some money and sent him to the store to buy a snow shovel suited to his years. He came back triumphantly and not only polished off the family paths elaborately, but afterward shouldered his new shovel and started out on a business enterprise of his own, coming home proudly with a dollar and a quarter in silver jingling in his pocket.

  “Christmas money,” he told Betty with shining eyes. “Don’tcha guess we all can have Christmas now, seein’ Muth is getting well?”

  And Christmas was only a week off!

  “Why, of course!” said Marjorie, coming into the room just then. “That’s what I came here for in the first place, to spend Christmas with you all. Certainly we’ve got to have a Christmas. Where do you put the tree, Betty?”

  “Tree!” said Betty with a sudden scorn. “We haven’t had a tree since we left Brentwood. I don’t even know if Bud remembers our last one, and I’m sure Sunny doesn’t.”

  “Sure I remember it,” said Bud indignantly. “Whaddaya think I am?”

  “We could put it over there by the window,” said Bonnie thoughtfully, “if we weally had a twee. Over where other peoples could see how pwetty it is. That’s what the other children’s folks are going to do wif their twees—put ’em where other folks can see ’em.”

  “Of course,” said Marjorie. “We want to give pleasure to others as well as ourselves.”

  There wasn’t much more said about it then, but a kind of joyous expectancy began to pervade the house as it came to be a fixed possibility that there would be a Christmas.

  Ever since she had arrived Marjorie had been planning what she would do, but there hadn’t as yet been time to carry out her plans.

  “Monday you and I ought to go
out and do some Christmas shopping,” said Marjorie to Betty as they were putting everything in shining order Saturday evening after supper.

  “Christmas shopping, my eye! A lot of Christmas shopping I could do. I haven’t got ten cents of my own,” said Betty ruefully.

  “Oh, yes, you have,” laughed Marjorie. “Look in your purse. I put some in there this afternoon while you were down at the store, and it’s for Christmas shopping and nothing else.”

  “Do you think I would go Christmas shopping with your money?” asked Betty scornfully.

  “It’s not my money,” laughed Marjorie. “It’s yours. I gave it to you so we could have some fun. You don’t think it’s any fun, do you, to do all the shopping myself, and not have anybody else be getting up secrets, too? Now, don’t act that way. Let’s have a real Christmas, bright and happy. Let’s not think who the money belongs to. Let’s just get the things for each other we know each likes or wants, and make up for all the other Christmases that I’ve lost in the family.” She beamed lovingly upon Betty, and Betty softened.

  “And I used to think you were selfish!” said Betty sorrowfully.

  It was Sunday morning while they were getting breakfast together that Marjorie asked quite casually, “Where do you go to church? Is it far from here?”

  Betty stopped stirring the pancake batter she was preparing and stared at her.

  “Go to church?” She laughed. “We don’t go. We haven’t since we left Brentwood. For one thing, we didn’t have the clothes to go there or anywhere else. And for another thing, I guess we were all too discouraged and disheartened to bother about church. People don’t feel much interested in going to church when they are having such a time as we’ve had. It isn’t easy to believe in a God who lets people like Father and Mother suffer as they have done. I don’t believe in God, myself. At least, if there is one, He doesn’t know anything about us individually. He certainly can’t care anything about us or He would make things different for us, that is, if He could.”

  Marjorie looked at her, aghast.

  “Oh, Betty! That’s awful! You mustn’t talk that way.”

  “Why not, I’d like to know? Do you believe in God?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Why do you?”

  Marjorie looked at her thoughtfully.

  “I never stopped to think about why,” she said slowly, “but I do. I certainly do!”

  “You do just because you were taught that way, probably,” said Betty bitterly. “But people aren’t doing that anymore, believing just because somebody else does.”

  “Betty, dear! Don’t talk that way,” said Marjorie, deeply troubled. “That isn’t right.”

  “Right! Ha! What’s that, anyway? Who said I had to do right? Well, I didn’t mean to worry you, only you asked about going to church, and I suppose you’ll be disappointed in us if that’s what you expect of us. Not one of us goes to church, except Ted. He’s the religious one of the flock.”

  “Ted?” said Marjorie, lifting astonished eyes.

  “Yes, Ted. He’s as faithful as the clock. He walks way back to Brentwood every Sunday. He’s gotten to be friends with a young preacher back there, and we can’t keep him away. He’ll probably want to walk you out there with him if you suggest church to him.”

  “Why, I’d love to go,” said Marjorie. “Why don’t we both go? It’s a gorgeous morning.”

  “Thanks, no,” said Betty coldly. “I don’t feel religiously inclined, and anyway, I haven’t any coat. You couldn’t just divide your coat with me, though I presume you would if it were possible. Besides, it’s you that wants to go to church, not me. Here, Ted”—as the boy came in from the street—“here’s a candidate to go to church with you.”

  Ted looked at Marjorie with a sudden sparkle in his eyes.

  “Sure, I’ll take her,” he said diffidently. “But you haveta walk. There’s no carline except a long roundabout way.”

  “I’ll love to walk!” said Marjorie.

  “In this snow?” asked Betty scornfully.

  “Yes, the snow makes it all the nicer. But I can’t go and leave you to get dinner all alone.”

  “I don’t mind getting dinner. I enjoy it, with all these nice things you’ve bought us. If you only knew how many dinners I’ve got with only a can of beans and some stale bread!”

  “You poor dear! But that’s all the more reason why you should have a vacation from it. You go to church and I’ll get dinner!”

  “Not on your life!” said Betty, using her brother’s phrase. “If I had any time for church, I’d use it trying to fix up a little. My hair needs washing.”

  “We’ll go to a beauty parlor tomorrow.”

  “No, we won’t do that either,” said Betty. “If I had any money for beauty parlors I wouldn’t use it that way. Not with all the things I need.”

  Just then came a call from upstairs.

  “Betty, your mother thinks she would like to have a little talk with your sister now, if you can spare her,” called the father.

  “All right, Father, I’m coming,” called Marjorie. Then she turned to Ted.

  “If Mother wants me, perhaps I ought not to go with you this morning. But how about tonight? Do you go at night, too?”

  “Sure I do!” said Ted, snapping his jaws together as if he had often had to contend for his right to do so.

  “Oh, yes, he goes. You can’t keep him home!” snapped Betty. “You’d think it was a saloon with a pool table they have there the way he’s devoted to it. You can’t pry him loose. Even the long walk doesn’t stop him!”

  There was a sneer in the end of Betty’s voice, and Marjorie thought she saw resentment quiver over Ted’s sensitive face, as if Betty’s words were like whiplashes on his bare flesh, but he lifted his head proudly with a kind of defiance in his eyes. If she was going to laugh at him he was ready for her.

  But Marjorie smiled warmly, with sympathy in her voice as she said, “That’s a pretty good recommendation for the church, I should say. All right, I’ll go tonight if I find I can’t go this morning. How soon do you start?”

  “Ought to get going in half an hour,” said the boy, glancing at the clock.

  “All right. If I don’t get downstairs in time, you just start without me.”

  Then she went upstairs to her mother.

  “Your mother did not sleep at all last night,” said the father, standing at the foot of the bed, looking anxiously toward her. “She has been worrying a lot about you, and I told her it was best to send for you and just talk it out and get it off her mind. This morning she has just a shade of fever again, and I thought if we could only get to the bottom of the trouble and talk it through and have a thorough understanding, Mother could rest and not worry, and maybe get a bit of sleep before the doctor comes.”

  “Of course!” said Marjorie eagerly. “But why should there be anything to worry about? I do hope I haven’t made you worse, Mother dear, by coming now when you were sick! I didn’t know, of course, but I guess I should have written first and asked if you were willing I should come.”

  “No, no, dear child!” said her father in protest. “I’m glad you didn’t. We probably would have felt it wasn’t fit here for you to come now when we are in such straits. We would have been too proud to let you see to what we had fallen. And your poor little mother would have gone on grieving. No, it isn’t about your coming at all that your mother is worried. Although, of course, she, as well as all of us, are ashamed that you had to find us in great poverty. Your mother has been worrying lest you may have thought that when she came to see you some two years ago you might think she came to try and get money out of your adoptive mother. The thought has fairly obsessed her, until I can do nothing to take it out of her mind. She seems to think it will always be there in your mind when you think of us.”

  “Oh, my dear little mother!” said Marjorie, flinging herself down on her knees beside the bed and gathering her mother into her arms, brushing the tears away from the thin
cheeks and kissing the trembling lips. “Of course not. How could I? In the first place, I didn’t know a thing before Mrs. Wetherill died. I only knew that you had given me up, and I did feel bad about that. I felt as if I had not been wanted, and I suppose that feeling made me love the Wetherills all the more fiercely. They were lovely to me, Mother, of course, and they did love me. But sometimes my heart would ache, thinking how my birth mother didn’t want me, and wishing I could see you just once to know what you were like. But as for money, I never once thought about it. They told me when I was quite young that you were not in circumstances to bring me up the way you wanted me brought up, and so you gave me to them. I think that was all Mrs. Wetherill knew about it until a short time before Mr. Wetherill died. Then he told her, but I do not know just what he told her. I do not think he told her much, because from her letter written just before she died, she seemed to be very much disturbed at what she had found out from you, and terribly upset that you had returned in full all the money they paid for the privilege of adopting me. No, Mother dear, there wasn’t ever a thing said to make me feel you were after money when you came to see me. I think that was what had made Mrs. Wetherill feel that she must tell me about you before she died. I think she was conscience-stricken when she found you still cared about me, and she felt she ought not to have kept you from seeing me. She rather put it upon me that I ought to come and find you, and she suggested that I would have plenty of money and was free to do what I would with it. I think she knew that she ought in some way to make up to you for her selfishness in keeping your child when you wanted her back. I think she understood herself that you were not the kind of people to whom money could make up for what they loved.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad!” sighed the sick woman with relief. “Then you didn’t come here just out of pity for us?”

  “My dear, I hadn’t the slightest idea of pitying you. I felt that I was the one to be pitied. I was all alone in the world, and I didn’t even know if my own people were still living. You know, it was some time since you had been heard from. You might have all died for all I knew, or moved to another country!”