Treasured Brides Collection

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Suddenly, the thought of the man burst into her thoughts again. What if he should hang around and frighten Mother? It was silly, of course, to think that, and what could she do about it but pray? “Oh, God, take care of Mother dear, and Janice, please,” she prayed again and again as she walked down the street, her heart gradually growing quieter and more trustful, her nerves steadying.

  As she neared the store, she remembered Chris. Would he really come there to work that day, or would he back out of it after thinking it over? Somehow, she couldn’t make it seem real that Chris Walton, the banker’s son, the most popular boy in high school—popular, too, she had heard, in his college—should be coming to work that morning in the store just as she was—to measure sugar and potatoes and bring up kegs of mackerel from the cellar. Probably, when his people found it out, they would put a stop to it. Probably, his lady mother would do something about it. She would want him in a profession. But anyway, Natalie herself was glad that Chris himself had been willing to do any good, honest work. It fitted so perfectly with the ideal she had formed of his character as she had watched him from afar through four years of high school. Natalie liked to keep her ideals of people she admired. Her standards were high, and not many came up to them. So far, this young man had. She would likely never have much to do with him. Her life and his were far apart as the poles, of course. Even if he came into the store for a time, there would presently be found something else for him, something more in the line of profession, and this little spurt of work in a store would only be used as a step to something fitter. But if he came, while he stayed she hoped he would make good. He would never be anything to her, of course, but she liked to think there were such fine, noble people in the world, a few such young men. It made the world more worthwhile to live in.

  Of course, he had been kind to her, and just now he happened to be grateful to her for having him put on to the position, but she mustn’t presume upon that. She must keep her quiet, aloof way. Her act of introducing him to the manager had been the merest trifling kindness. Anyone would do that. She mustn’t let him think that she was expecting him to pay her any attention whatever. Indeed, she must manage to get away before he did, so that it would not look that way. He must not think he had to carry her bundles home for her.

  However, if he came, and if he stayed, he would probably soon be so busy he wouldn’t think anything about it. The routine of the day would take care of that. He would be so tired by evening that he would want to get home quickly and wouldn’t have time for the little cashier. She needn’t worry about that. She only hoped he would make good—if he came.

  But he was there before her, waiting outside the store, and they stood together talking a minute or two. It was very pleasant to have him so friendly, the boy whom all the girls admired. And she couldn’t blame them. She had admired him herself, always. Had liked to listen to him recite in school, because he always did it as if he enjoyed it and knew what he was talking about. She had seldom had the pleasure of going to a school game because she had always had to hurry home to help her mother right after school. But she had often stood at the schoolroom window with a book spread on the windowsill before her, and watched the boys practicing in the yard below. And always she had singled out Chris as the most finished player, and exulted in the way he led them all and they deferred to him. Well, now she was enjoying a pleasant little contact with one whom she could enjoy as a friend, if their circumstances in life had been different. But she must not let her head get turned by it. He was Chris Walton, and she was Natalie Halsey, born into different worlds and stations. Of course, her family had been good, too, but the world had forgotten that, though all the families of the earth were one, after all! But then, she knew what people thought of a poor girl allowing a friendship with a boy who was in a higher social class, and she didn’t intend to put herself in such a position. So, as soon as the store opened, she retired to her little glass den and began to work with her cash register and her books. And Chris stood back by a counter and watched the day in the store open before him.

  It interested him that he was to be a part of this busy new world.

  Almost at once people began to swarm in, for coffee and butter and yeast cakes; for a loaf of bread and a box of Aunt Jemima’s prepared buckwheat; for cereals, dried beef, and glasses of jelly for lunches.

  There came a lull in half an hour, and the manager started him to work, giving him a linen coat and an apron, setting him to picking over a barrel of potatoes and putting them up in paper sacks, so many pounds to a sack. There was to be a bargain sale of potatoes that day. And when the potatoes were all measured, he had a barrel to go over and pick out the perfect heads. Strange, bitter thoughts came to him now and then as he remembered the other boys in his class, all in college now, going about with college caps, whistling on the campus as they went from one class to another, wearing their fraternity pins and planning their pleasant careers for the future, while he sorted decaying vegetables.

  But for the most part, Chris was rather interested than otherwise in what he had to do, conscientious to do it thoroughly, and ambitious to see how quickly he could get it done. He was too busy to contemplate the fate that had thrown him into a chain grocery instead of a college.

  Now and then he cast a glance over at the little glass den where Natalie worked, busy every minute, making change, smiling pleasantly at the customers, a crowd always around her little window. How patient and sweet she looked. Her delicate face shone out, too fine for such surroundings. Of course, the store was nice and clean, and the people were all decent, respectable people, and there was nothing really unpleasant about her work. But somehow she looked a lady, made to be waited upon. There was a quiet refinement about her. What was that nursery rhyme Elise used to sing, “Sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, and feed upon strawberries, sugar, and cream.” Somehow Natalie’s face made one feel like putting her at ease and caring for her.

  So Chris’s thoughts moved, in and out all day, between the cabbages he brought up from the cellar and the empty crates and cans that he carried down to the cellar. He was literally an errand boy as he had said, taking orders moment by moment, never through with one activity before another was handed to him. By noon, he was hungry as a bear and ready to devour eagerly the hot coffee and sandwiches the manager had sent in for his helpers from the pie shop nearby, because he couldn’t spare any of them to go out and get it for themselves.

  They inhaled the food, standing in the back room where the stores were kept, leaning back against the big refrigerator, or sitting on the cellar stairs or an empty crate, swallowed it down hastily, one at a time in turn, and hastened back to work again. Chris wondered that they had so much business all the time. He had never supposed that a grocery store would be such an active place. There seemed always to be somebody wanting something. By night, he was dog weary and sore in every muscle. Some muscles he hadn’t known he possessed. And he had thought that every muscle he had was in perfect training. He wondered why it seemed so much more strenuous than playing football. Perhaps because it was utterly new, and he was a little excited about it, anxious to please.

  He heard that first day that the district manager would be around in the middle of the week, and his fate would probably be decided then. The district manager would possibly have a new man to put in the place, and Chris, being only a substitute, would have to step out.

  That made it a sort of game, and Chris worked harder than ever. He might not have picked out the grocery business for a life work, and he might not want to remain in it forever, but he didn’t want to be put out of anything he had undertaken. He wanted to be so good that they would beg him to stay, even if he was leaving of his own free will for a better position. So he pitched into his work with all his might.

  He discovered that his fellow workmen were most friendly among themselves, but they regarded him with suspicion. He had not yet won their confidence. He had to do that. They regarded him as an entire outsider. Perhaps some
inkling of his former estate had already penetrated to their knowledge.

  They answered him shortly, gave him no more information regarding his work than was absolutely necessary, and left him to find out for himself in every case possible. They let him search for an article in the cellar, instead of telling him how close it was to his hand, and were generally just as unpleasant as they could be without actually descending to open fight.

  Chris was rather amazed at first, and then indignant. He longed to take them out and thrash them one by one. He found his heart in a continual fume over some rudeness or unnecessary taunt.

  It did not help his cause that on the third day of his presence in the store there came an influx of young women, three of them. They were dressed up, apparently, for an afternoon tea. They breezed in, holding their dainty chiffons and handsome fur coats back from the barrels and boxes. Somewhat pompously, they demanded to see Christopher Walton.

  Chapter 10

  Chris was cleaning the cellar. He had been at it all day. There was to be a new arrangement of boxes and stores that were kept down there, and everything in the whole cellar had to be moved and thoroughly cleaned. He had never done anything quite like it before, except the washing of those windows in the Sullivan Street house, but he was working away like mad trying to get done before night. He was wearing a pair of borrowed overalls, which did not fit him, and his hair was sticking every way. He was just awkwardly wringing out a wet mop when the man from the meat counter yelled down the cellar stairs.

  “Hey, there, Walton! Some dames up here wantta see ya! Make it snappy!”

  Chris dropped his mop in dismay and stared up the stairs.

  “I can’t come!” he shouted at the disappearing heels of his informant, but the only answer that came back was another “Make it snappy! The boss hates a mess of ladies around in the way. This ain’t no social tea!”

  Angrily Chris started up the stairs, wiping his wet hands on his overalls on each side, and dashing them wildly through his disordered hair. What he meant to do was to get a glimpse from the back of the store and see whether this was some practical joke or not. If the boss had sent for him he would go, of course, but otherwise he would retreat again to the cellar and pretend not to have heard. Surely neither his mother nor Elise would come to bother him.

  But Irene Claskey, Ethel Harrower, and Anna Peters had not stayed where they were. They had followed down the length of the store and stood just outside the doorway of the storeroom into which the cellar stairs led. So he came upon them before he realized, and they all clamored at once.

  “Hello, Chris! Congratulations!” they screeched.

  “So, it’s really true! You’ve got a job! How long will it last?”

  “Oh, Chris, but you’re a scream. Whose overalls are those? Did you borrow them from your butler?”

  And then they let out wild, hilarious laughter that arrested the attention of everyone in the crowded store.

  White with fury, Chris stood glaring at them, his chin lifted haughtily. Every eye was upon him now. Even the boss coming down that way with a grin on his pleasant face. The boss had been fine. He must do something about this.

  “Did you want something?” he asked in a clear, stern voice. Even Natalie heard him away up at the front of the store in her little glass den. His voice was so impersonal that you would have thought he was merely addressing a customer.

  “Sure we want something!” clanged out Irene, rather enjoying her large audience than otherwise, and openly exulting in Chris’s discomfort. “We’re going to have a high school reunion next Saturday night, and we want you to help us out. We’re having a spree up at the Rabbit Inn on Horndale Pike, and we want you to take a bunch up there.”

  “I haven’t got any car!” said Chris shortly.

  “Oh, we know that,” went on Irene. “We can get a car if you’ll drive it. Dad said you were a good driver and he’d trust our car with you. We have to start at five o’clock, and we’re meeting at my house—”

  But Chris stopped her voluble details with a clear ringing word.

  “Nothing doing!” he said firmly. “Sorry to seem unaccommodating, but I have to work. Good afternoon!” And he turned on his heel and vanished down the cellar stairs, shutting the door behind him.

  The customers turned back to their bargains with smiles and knowing looks toward the discomfited girls who stared for a moment, and then with many giggles and contemptuous remarks picked their way hilariously out of the store.

  Chris stayed down in the cellar the rest of the afternoon and worked like a fiend. He had no mind to go upstairs and be kidded by the entire store force. He made that cellar look like a parlor. The floor was scrubbed clean enough to eat from. Every box and crate was set to mathematical exactness, arranged in logical order. Each row was labeled with a number on the beam overhead and the same number chalked on each counter. The cellar was so systemized that anything could be found in a jiffy. But Chris had been working with only half of his well-trained mind. The other half had been raging, rending him, lashing itself in fury over his humiliation. Those girls! Fools! he called them, and took out his revenge on the cellar floor, using up to the handle the bristles of the old scrubbing brush. Never was the cellar floor so clean before.

  When all the others had gone home, the boss came down and looked around, well pleased and full of commendation. Chris listened in silence to his comments of praise for the way he had arranged things, and then he burst out.

  “I’m all kinds of sorry, Mr. Foster, that those fool girls came around and made a scene. They’re not any special friends of mine and they just wanted to play some kind of joke on me, I guess. I certainly was angry.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, Chris,” said the boss, a warm light coming into his eyes. “I understand. Some girls are just naturally made that way. Don’t you worry. You’ve done good work this afternoon. Forget the other. You did ’em up all righty, and I was glad to see it. They hustled away after you left them like a row of little dogs with their tails tucked in. They certainly didn’t get a rise out of you.”

  Chris looked up with his heart warming toward this young man who was his superior and grinned. It was the first time he had called him Chris, and somehow he did not resent it. It seemed rather pleasant.

  “Thank you,” he said heartily. “It’s great of you to take it that way. One thing’s certain. I didn’t want anything more to do with those girls, never did have much, only we were in the same class at school.”

  “Well, they’re no ladies,” said Foster. “Now take our Miss Halsey, she’s a lady. She may not wear such highfalutin’ clothes, nor run around to parties, and she may have to work for her living, but when it comes to acting like a lady, boy, she can put it all over those three. She’s a fine girl.”

  “She certainly is,” said Chris heartily, and felt a strange little thrill of pleasure at hearing Natalie commended.

  “Well,” said Foster, “guess it’s time for us to quit tonight. You’ve made this cellar look like a palace and no mistake. You’re going to make a go of it here, I can see that already. Well, good night!”

  Chris went home that night walking on air. His boss had commended him and had actually hinted that his job was practically a sure thing. He was surprised at himself that he cared so much to keep it.

  He had almost forgotten about the unpleasant incident of the girls that afternoon, till suddenly it occurred to him that he had not seen Natalie all day except at a distance. She hadn’t waited on him. Perhaps she had heavy bundles to carry and had to carry them herself with her slender arms. In the only glimpse he had caught of her she looked pale and tired. He wondered if her mother had perhaps been worse and she had been up all night with her. He found a distinct cause for worry in the thought.

  Then he began to wonder if Natalie had seen those girls. Of course she must have. She could not have missed them. No one could. That fiendish Irene had taken care of that. Did Natalie think that was the kind of girls he liked? Did she
perhaps hear the invitation and think he was going to accept it and take those girls to a class spree at that infamous road house, Rabbit Inn on Horndale Pike? Somehow he did not want Natalie to think he was intimate with those girls.

  Of course he had known Irene Claskey and Anna Peters since kindergarten days, but Ethel Harrower was a comparatively new arrival in town with a rather unclassed social standing. None of the girls but Irene and Ethel had taken her up. She used too much rouge and lipstick and smoked a good deal in public. People like Mrs. Walton didn’t consider her nice. Somehow it gave him an unpleasant feeling to think that Natalie had supposed her his friend. Was that the reason Natalie had hurried home? He wished he knew. He would try and get out early the next morning and get a chance to speak to her in the store before people began to come. Though it had been his policy, and hers too, apparently, to keep their distance. Well, perhaps he could catch up to her on the way and get a word with her. He wasn’t just clear what he could say. He was too well bred to just sail in and blast those other girls. Yet he certainly did not want Natalie to think he belonged to that crowd. Well, it wouldn’t be long till tomorrow now and, anyhow, he was glad at what the boss had said. He would tell Natalie that. She would be pleased, too.