Brentwood

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Sunny came running. Yelling.

  “Tat, where’s a tat? I wantta see ze tat! Oh! Kitty! Kitty! See ze funny ’ittle kitty!”

  “Can’t ya shut up, Sunny Gay? Can’t ya get outta my way?”

  The children were plastered eagerly up to the sink, one on either side, Sunny with his chin on the edge of the sink, Bonnie holding on and watching, and suddenly the dishpan, which was a trifle too large for the inadequate sink, and much too full of dirty soapy water, tilted crazily, and Bud, in his efforts to right it, released one hand from the cat. The cat had learned to take any advantage, no matter how small, that came to her miserable life, and she clutched and clawed at the edge of the pan, floundered away from Bud, and made a dive, anywhere out of that awful bath. One instant she wetly clutched Bud’s neck, digging her nails in deep, the next she trailed sloppily across his front and slid from his grasp, thumping down on the floor with a flop and then scuttling dazedly like a little drowned imp through dining room and hall, finding refuge at last in the best upholstered chair the Gay family owned, and began licking away furiously at her outraged fur.

  But the pan she had left behind her had attempted to follow her descent and poured wildly over poor frightened Bud, with branches in every direction, one going right down Sunny’s handy little neck and into his shoes, and another splashing into Bonnie’s face and deluging her neck and arms and the front of her dress.

  A united howl arose, Sunny dancing up and down with his eyes shut and screaming, and Bonnie setting up a wail like none she had ever given before.

  “Aw, shut up, ya little pests, ya! Now see whatchuve done!”

  Betty came flying downstairs hushing them up, her eyes flashing fire! She beheld the dripping crowd in horror.

  “Buddie Gay! What are you doing? You naughty, naughty boy!”

  She seized Bud’s arm and jerked him back from the sink, but some subconscious reaction compelled him to keep his hold on the dishpan, which he had been trying to right, and when Betty removed him from the sink, the dishpan with its remaining dirty water came along and deluged her. She had just changed her kitchen dress for the pretty little house dress Marjorie had given her that morning. She had been upstairs getting ready to meet the doctor when she heard the tumult downstairs.

  Betty looked down at herself in horror and gasped, the more so as the nature of the element that was doused over her was gradually revealed by the dregs of dirt in the dishpan.

  It was just at that opportune second that the doctor arrived and rang the bell. Only Bonnie heard it, and stopping her wail midway, she went to open the door, then went on with her wail.

  “Why, what’s the matter, little girl?” he asked, looking at her distressed face in astonishment.

  “Buddie was w–w–washing the kitty!” she sobbed, “and the kitty flew, an’ it’s all over us!” She opened her mouth in another howl and led the way to the kitchen where the two boys and Betty were carrying on.

  “You wicked boy!” said Betty, in a cold, hard tone, never the tone she would have had the nice young doctor hear. “You wicked, wicked little boy! What on earth were you doing to make all this trouble?”

  “I was—washing—a cat!” howled Bud, forgetting his years and reverting to babyhood. “She—was—all bluggy! The dogs were—f–f–fighting her!”

  “Do you mean to tell me that you dared to bring a cat in here from the street and wash it in my dishpan? A dirty little alley cat? In my clean dishpan! And my dish soap, too!” she said as she sighted the sloppy cake of soap winking at her from across the floor under the table. “Oh, you unspeakable child! As if I didn’t have enough to do without all this mess. And you’ve ruined this pretty dress, too! You knew it was naughty to bring a dirty cat in here and wash it, didn’t you? Answer me, Buddie Gay, you knew it, didn’t you?”

  “She—w–was—all cold—and trembling—and—and—s–s–scared!” howled Buddie, now in paroxysms of hysteria.

  “I don’t care if she was frozen stark to death!” said Betty, in a hard, cold tone of fury. “Where is she now? Answer me, Bud! Where is that cat now?”

  “I d–d–don’t k–k–know!” howled Bud. “She–she–she—clawed me, and then she f–f–flew! I might bleed ta death mebbe, but you wouldn’t c–c–care!”

  Then Sunny put in with a cheerful excitement.

  “Her went in ze parlor, her did! Her is in muvver’s big chair wif the wockers, sittin’ up an’ wipin’ her fezzers wif her little wed tongue!”

  Sunny was dripping from neck to toes, and there were both tears and drops of dirty water on his cheeks, but his face was eager with excitement.

  Then suddenly Betty looked up and saw the doctor standing in the doorway with the most comical look of amusement and pity on his face that a man could wear, and all at once she knew that she, too, was crying! The utmost humiliation that life could bring had descended upon her. The handsome young doctor had seen her like this, wet and dirty and angry! He had heard her like this. It was something she could never undo. The echo of her angry voice was still ringing in her ears, like the sound of a gong echoing long after the ringer is gone. No amount of apology or excuse could ever make him forget her that way. She was undone before him, disgraced forever.

  And all limp and dirty as she was, she sank down into a kitchen chair and burst into real weeping.

  If she could have seen the doctor’s face at that moment, she would have been surprised. The comical look of amusement vanished completely, and a look of utter tenderness and sympathy came into his eyes. In one motion he set down his medicine case on a chair in the hall behind him and strode over to Betty.

  “Poor child!” he said. “You’ve been working too hard. We’ll have you down in bed the next thing if you don’t look out. Here!” he said, seizing upon a towel that hung on the rack above the sink out of harm’s way. It was a clean towel. Betty had taken pride in hanging it there a few minutes before, thinking how nice her kitchen looked, all fixed up for Sunday. She had been so glad there was that clean towel.

  The doctor wet the end of the towel and came over to Betty, lifting her face very gently and wiping off the tears with the wet towel.

  “There!” he said cheerfully. “You’ll feel better now. Nothing like cool water to brace one up. Hand over your hands, too. There, now, don’t you feel better? That dress will wash, won’t it? No great harm done, is there? Anyway, I don’t wonder you felt you’d got to the limit. There! Go on crying if you want to. It will help you to recover. It isn’t everybody that can have the cat give a bath to the whole family at once on a Sunday morning.”

  Suddenly Betty looked up and laughed. Laughed with the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  The doctor came over to her again, taking a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and, lifting her chin with one hand, gently wiped the tears away.

  Betty stopped laughing, and her face held something almost like awe.

  “Oh,” she said suddenly, “I’m such a mess! And you will get your nice clean handkerchief all soiled!”

  She was coming back to herself now, with the hard usual edge in her voice, but somehow that little act of wiping her tears away had taken the shame and humiliation away from her hurt heart.

  “Well,” she said after a minute, “you’ve certainly seen me at my worst! I’m sure I don’t know what I said to those children.”

  “Do you often have as much cause?” asked the doctor with a companionable grin. “Now, let’s see what can be done for these other drowned people.”

  Sunny and Bonnie were standing in the middle of the floor, still dripping, staring at the two grownups, tears on their soiled cheeks. Bud had returned to the window and was softly blubbering to himself.

  “Ah—b–b–b–b–b—bath! Ah—b–b–bu–b–bu–b–bub–bath!”

  “I’ll have to take them to the bathroom and scrub them,” said Betty wearily. “And I’d just got them fixed up clean for Sunday!”

  “Too bad!” said the doctor sympathetically.

>   Betty seized Bonnie’s little dress and wrung the water out of it.

  “There! Go upstairs and take off everything,” she said. “I’ll be up in just a minute. You can get into the tub and turn on the water.”

  She took off Sunny’s shirt, finding him less damaged than his sister, and sent him up to get his bathrobe on. The she turned her attention to Bud, and her voice had its hard edge now in full.

  “Now, where is that cat?”

  Bud turned a woebegone face toward her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, find her!”

  “Is this the lost article?” asked the doctor, coming back from a tour of investigation and holding up a dreary little wisp of a meek stringy cat by the nape of her neck.

  “Oh, mercy!” said Betty, and in spite of herself broke into a laugh. “Here, I’ll open the door and put her out!”

  “You can’t do that, even to an alley cat,” said the doctor. “She’s too wet to put out in this cold. She’d freeze solid in half a minute! The society for the prevention of cruelty to animals would be after you.”

  “Sh–sh–she’s hongry!” announced Bud anxiously. “I p–p–romised her somethin’ ta eat! An’ you can’t let her go out there! There’s about thirteen dogs chasing her out there! She’s scared!”

  “Well, let’s see,” said the doctor, still holding the cat, “how about a box and some old rags? Couldn’t you manage that, Bud? Isn’t there a box in the cellar she would like for a bed? And we could put it down by the furnace in the cellar until she dries out, couldn’t we?”

  “Sure!” said Bud, brightening, and he stumped away to get the box.

  Betty shamedly brought a saucer of milk and set it down on a newspaper in the corner, and the poor little rag of a cat, crumpled and damp, addressed herself to the first full meal she had had since she arrived in this vale of tears.

  They stood watching her for a minute, with an adoring if damp Bud kneeling beside her, and then the doctor said, “How about that chair in there? Oughtn’t it to be wiped off before it dries in? Can I use this towel?”

  “Oh, I’ll do it,” said Betty, suddenly coming back to reality. “You’ve already exceeded a doctor’s duties several times over.”

  “Bud, as soon as that lady finishes her banquet, put her in her box and carry her down by the furnace, and then come up and get off those wet clothes. Make it snappy, too, hear, Bud? I don’t want you for a patient, not for a while, anyway.”

  “Awwright!” answered Bud with an absorbed tone. He sounded enraptured over that poor little ratty kitten. It was a foregone conclusion that he would not leave her charmed presence nor think of changing his wet clothes until he heard someone coming after him again.

  The doctor smiled indulgently as he hurried upstairs.

  “And now where are my real patients?” he called as he came up. “If they survived that tornado they must be getting well fast!” He came with his cheery presence into the room where Mrs. Gay was just waking from her first refreshing sleep since she had taken to her bed.

  Betty, in the bathroom hastening Bonnie through her leisurely bath, smiled to herself and wondered if all doctors were so cheerful and comforting. It was probably just because he was a doctor that he had been so nice to her when she had been down there in the kitchen hysterical over the mess the children had made. But it thrilled her to think of his wiping her tears, of the touch of his smooth fingers lifting her chin so gently. It was that sense of being cared for that touched her, brought the tears to her eyes.

  “Fool!” she told herself, “as if he cared anything about me. He’s a doctor, and it’s his business to heal anything, even a cat! He can’t bear to see things suffer, even with mortification, I suppose. That’s probably why he chose to be a doctor!”

  But she hurried Bonnie into her ragged little undergarments and got herself freshened up in the pretty knitted dress that Marjorie had given her. She would take it off as soon as he was gone, of course, but she must appear decently if only for a minute, after he had seen her looking so disreputable.

  So she came shining into the sickroom in an incredibly short space of time and gleaned an admiring glance from his nice eyes that made her feel warm all over.

  “Fool!” she told herself again bitterly. “It doesn’t mean a thing! He’s just kindly and impersonal! He’s probably in love with some charming nurse, or maybe married to an heiress. Any good man might have done just what he did and think nothing of it. He was just being kind and helping me out of a mess. It’s what any true gentleman ought always to do, put a girl at her ease. Of course, there aren’t many like that anymore, but it’s nice to know there is one left in the world who cares to be kind.” She stared after him wistfully as he went out to his car and drove away, and then she hurried upstairs to take off the pretty dress and throw on her very oldest. She had to scrub the kitchen now and she hated it, dirty cat-bath all over it! And the children’s clothes, too! And she must find something to put on Sunny while she did up his only decent outfit.

  Then it was time to put the vegetables on and look at the roast. Such a nice dinner! But she was too tired to enjoy it. There were bright red spots on her thin cheeks, and her tongue was sharp when she spoke to the children. She gave Bud the worst tongue-lashing he had ever had, and coming as a surprise after the doctor’s merry challenge, it hurt deeply. He dragged himself upstairs and stayed a long time, reflecting how hard grown-up people were to get along with. He took off his wet garments and put on the worst things he could find, out at the elbow and out at the knee. He didn’t care. He had the cat anyway. Then he stole down to the cellar and sat on the rough dirt floor beside the cat’s box watching her sleep, all curled up in a bunch. She had licked her fur fairly clean, and she was drying out nicely. She looked like the fluff that came under the bed when the room needed sweeping. He wondered why grown-up people hated cats so much. He thought she was lovely.

  If Marjorie, sitting in the pretty little old stone church of a hundred years ago, that was now called “the chapel,” and listening to the young preacher making salvation plainer than she had ever heard it before, could have known what was going on back at the little house on Aster Street, she would not have sat so comfortably absorbed in the sermon. But fortunately she did not know, and so it seemed to her that she was happier than she had ever been in church before. Always on Sunday she had gone to church with a vague longing for something, she hardly knew what, something that would satisfy the wistfulness of her soul. And it had never been there. Sometimes her imagination would soar heavenward, and she would try to feel as she thought a good saintly soul should feel, but always such forced emotions left her as she went from the church, and the days passed on with that uneasy little restlessness of soul back in her being somewhere that would not be entirely satisfied even when things were going just as she had planned.

  But here in this sweet chapel with its lovely arched ceiling of polished wood and its fine windows of old-fashioned design, there seemed a different atmosphere from the churches she had known all her life. It was as if a strong sea breeze were blowing through the little audience, waking up and freshening every mind to keener intelligence. As if a holy kind of glory pervaded the place. She heard one woman explaining to another, “Why, the Holy Spirit is here!” She wondered if that were what she was feeling. It seemed a place where God dwelt intimately, companioning with those who came to Him here in a way He did not reach the people who attended most church edifices. Maybe it was only a fanciful idea of hers. Her adoptive mother used to tell her that she was strange sometimes, had quaint, old-fashioned ideas. She often used to wonder if Mrs. Wetherill, much as she loved her, fully understood her when she tried to explain the strivings of her unsatisfied soul.

  Then, too, the singing here seemed to have a different sound from that in ordinary churches. The people sang the words as if they meant them, and the music rose like incense from an altar and seemed to mingle with the heavenly choirs above. Of course, that must be just fancy,
too, for the people around her were just ordinary people, some of them looked quite uncultured. It couldn’t be the quality of their voices, or their training either. It seemed to her that they were singing because they loved to sing and because they felt what they were singing. “Making a joyful noise unto the Lord.” Wasn’t that phrase somewhere in the Bible? Or was it in the ritual of the church? She wasn’t very familiar with Scripture. She didn’t know. Bible study had not been a part of her early training. She owned a beautifully bound Bible, and it had its place on her bedside table, but she had seldom read it. She had no idea where to begin to read a Bible. The beginning seemed so unreal. So she had seldom read it, except in snatches here and there occasionally, as one might pick up a book of poetry recognized as lovely but not suited to practical life.

  But now suddenly it seemed that the Bible was the guidebook for the Christian’s way, the indispensable source of all knowledge, the deep, hidden treasury of a Christian’s wealth. It had never occurred to her that the Bible could be all that, that it could be a thing upon which one lived and depended. She had looked upon it more as a clergyman’s handbook, too mystical for ordinary mortals to comprehend.

  So she sat and listened wide-eyed to the eager young preacher with the wonderful holy eyes who seemed as he talked to be looking into another world, listening to a higher authority than himself, and merely passing on to his hearers the word he received from heaven. He seemed as he talked to be keeping his eyes above them, looking into the face of God Himself, using not his own thoughts nor even his own words, but merely repeating what his soul had caught from the lips of his Master.

  When the sermon was over, she felt breathless, as if she had been privileged a glimpse into heaven itself, as if God had been there speaking to her soul through the lips of this young man. She was filled with awe. Her heart throbbed a response as though she wanted to answer a high, sweet call she had heard for the first time.