Homing

by Grace Livingston Hill

  There were cereals in the minute cupboard, which she had been ordered to use up because they would be stale by the time their owner returned. There was a bottle of real cream in the wee refrigerator, and a bottle of milk also. She did not need to make coffee, though she had been instructed in the ways of the percolator. There was bread and butter on hand and some peaches. What a breakfast! And how good everything was!

  She fed the canary and the fishes and talked to them as she did it, and the little creatures seemed to be cocking a wise eye at her and recognizing that she was somebody new.

  After she had washed her dishes and put things to rights she turned on the radio and came upon some wondrous music, and a message that reached her tired discouraged soul. A message that Jesus Christ not only was the Savior of all those who accepted His atonement on the cross for their sins, but that He wanted to be more. He wanted to be the guide and daily companion of each one whom He had saved.

  That was a new thought to Jane. She had often wondered if God cared for her, but that He should desire her love and companionship, and long to have the confidence of her soul, had never occurred to her. Was it true? She listened to the message to the end, and during the closing prayer she slipped down beside the big chair where she had been sitting and put her heart in the attitude of prayer. There were no words to her petition, just a longing, just apology in the eyes of her soul, just a wistful yearning for something she did not as yet understand.

  By and by she found a pleasant book to read, and in the cool of the afternoon she went out and took a walk in the park that was not far away. Then about five o’clock she began to be hungry and went in to the restaurant and got a good dinner. A chicken dinner. It seemed to her a marvelous day, and when she had finished her dinner she went up and read awhile and then went to bed early. This had been like a real vacation. Why this was the greatest thing that had happened to her since her mother died!

  The canary welcomed her with soft conversing cheeps, and she did not feel alone. She was almost happy.

  She began to calculate. If she got her own breakfast and a very cheap lunch she might be able to have her dinners down at that restaurant every day. She had got to be well fed or she would collapse in the store again, and that wouldn’t do. She would lose her job if that kept on happening.

  She went to bed and to sleep very early that night. The church bell on the tower not far away rang again, and it seemed to keep time to the words: “In my Father’s house. Many mansions in my Father’s house.”

  She was up bright and early next morning, her breakfast got and her work done. The housework was like play, a doll’s house. Then she was off to the store.

  She tried walking to the store. Miss Leech said she did it every day for the exercise unless it was very stormy. But when she was almost there she began to feel weak in the knees and realized she should not have attempted it yet. She probably had been going beyond her strength for a long time, on insufficient food, as that nurse at the store had suggested. She should give herself another day or two to rest before she tried such long walks. Well, she would take things as easy as possible today, and she would eat a good lunch, no saving of food till she was stronger and quite fit for her work.

  She was in her place a little before time, getting her stock settled and greeting the other girls pleasantly, and then, just after the opening bugle, Mr. Clark came hurrying up. His very attitude filled her with alarm, though of course it really didn’t matter so much now if she did have to pay for that crystal clasp, now that she was getting a room free for two whole weeks.

  “Miss Scarlett,” he said, “I’ve just been talking to Mr. Windle, and he feels quite strongly that in view of your having had such a bad time day before yesterday you should certainly take your vacation. He says that your record has been so good, and you have been so faithful during the hot months, that he feels we should let you have your vacation with pay! He doesn’t often do that, you know, but he’s making an exception of you because you were sick. So if you will go up to the office right away you will receive your paycheck at once and then you will have something to make your vacation a little easier. I think you are looking a little better this morning, and I hope by the end of your vacation we shall see a decided difference in you. I hope you have a wonderful time. Good-bye, and we’ll be looking for you back again.”

  In a daze Jane took the slip he gave her to take to the cashier and went slowly down the aisle and up the stairs to the office.

  She was weak with amazement. She wondered when she reached the office whether she had remembered to thank Mr. Clark for telling her, and whether it would be right to interrupt Mr. Windle to thank him. She decided against that. Two whole weeks with money in hand as if she was working, and a lovely place to stay. Not even a grand hotel at the shore could be as good as that. There were all those lovely books to read, and the radio! Why, it was wonderful. God surely had been taking thought for her. She could not doubt it.

  And she would have time to look about her in a leisurely way for another room. She wouldn’t have to take another terrible place because she simply had to have someplace in which to stay right away.

  Gradually she came out of her daze sufficiently to get excited over her good luck. As she came downstairs she met Mr. Clark, and she looked at him with shy eagerness.

  “I guess I didn’t thank you,” she said. “I know you used your influence, or this wouldn’t have happened to me.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Mr. Clark with a wide generous gesture. “Take care of yourself. I hope you have a good time!”

  So Jane started out to go back to her new quarters. She wouldn’t have to save her strength for work today, so perhaps she could manage to walk back. She could stop and rest in the park on the way. How wonderful to be a lady of leisure!

  Two days later the letter that the firm of lawyers had sent to Jane Scarlett at Mrs. Hawkins’ boardinghouse came back to the office with the legend stamped on it that one Jane Scarlett was not at the address given below and her present whereabouts was unknown.

  In due time the lawyer who received the mail came with it to Kent Havenner.

  “How about this, Kent,” he said, “didn’t you say this Scarlett girl had given you the address where she was living?”

  “I did,” said Kent Havenner emphatically. “What’s the matter?”

  “Not there! Address unknown!” announced the other man. “You sure that’s the right address?”

  Havenner took the envelope and examined it, comparing it carefully with his notebook.

  “Yes, that’s correct,” he said. “I wonder—?”

  “Well, it seems we’re up a tree still,” said the lawyer. “You thought you had such a good lead, and now our bird has flown. We’ll have to begin all over again. Probably she wasn’t the right Scarlett after all.”

  “Well, here, give it to me and I think I can find her. She works in a store.”

  “All right, hunt her up, and be quick about it. I’d like to get that Scarlett matter settled up and off the docket. I’m tired of seeing the documents in the safe every time I go there.”

  So Kent Havenner went out in the middle of the afternoon and made his way to Windle’s store, going confidently to the button counter, expecting to be able to pick out his girl at a glance.

  But though he walked up and down the aisle three times and watched every girl that was waiting on customers there, there wasn’t a single one who looked like Jane. Could it be possible that his eyes deceived him?

  Finally he went up to a girl who was idle for the moment.

  “Isn’t there a Miss Scarlett at this counter?”

  “She’s not here today. She’s out. She’s been sick. I guess that’s why,” explained the girl who wasn’t a regular at the button counter. “There’s the head of the department, he might know.”

  So Havenner interviewed Mr. Clark.

  “Oh! She’s gone on vacation,” explained Clark loftily.

  “Well, could you tell m
e where she has gone?” asked the young lawyer. “It’s quite important.”

  “No! I’m sorry! We don’t require our salespeople to sign up for vacation absences. Probably if you would inquire at the office they would know her residence.”

  Clark eyed the man hostilely. He was dressed too well to be a friend or relative of Jane Scarlett. What could he want of her? Perhaps there were problems in Jane’s life even worse than hot weather and ill health. At least he was doing nothing to encourage this young man.

  Kent Havenner went on his way. He decided to go to Jane’s boardinghouse. Doubtless the wrong person had got hold of the letter.

  So he went to Mrs. Hawkins, and she dilated irately on how Jane had left her at a moment’s notice just because she asked for a little more money. And no, she didn’t know where she went!

  “She just walked off with her back up!” said Mrs. Hawkins, and went in and shut the door.

  Kent Havenner even went to the trouble of interviewing the office at the store and found that what Mr. Clark had told him was true. Jane was on vacation and nobody—not anybody—knew where she was. There was nothing he could do about it, and so he went back to the office to confess himself beaten for the time being. And there was nothing anybody could do but wait till Jane Scarlett came back to the store.

  But meantime, Jane Scarlett was having the grandest time of her life.

  She had portioned out her money so that she could have one good, square, interesting meal a day, and for the other two, fruit and cereal and milk. That would leave her a little more than a week’s wages to put by. Then she got a map of the city at a newsstand and studied the region within walking distance, or cheap riding distance, from the store, and regularly every morning she started out hunting a room.

  More and more as she hunted she was filled with distress over the places from which she must choose. Not one had a semblance of homelikeness or comfort. Not at the price she should pay. Yet there must be something better somewhere. Perhaps her ideas were too fine. And of course the place where she was now living made the contrast all the more deadly. Yet she did not ask so much. Cleanliness, a reasonable amount of fresh air, and of heat in winter. The room might be bare and guiltless of paint. The bed might be narrow; if it could only be tolerably smooth, she could stand its being hard. Were just these few necessities so expensive? Surely there must be something bearable somewhere.

  But so many hall bedrooms were the same. No heat in winter, no air in summer. Few and far bathroom privileges.

  So one day she went to the big city station and hunted up the Travelers Aid woman. Yes, she knew of a few rooms where conditions were more tolerable. She wrote a list of them, but warned Jane that they were usually in great demand.

  So Jane started out again, and at last found a room that she thought she could stand. It was bare and desolate in the extreme. A bureau, a sagging woven wire cot, a straight chair, and a washbowl on a shelf in the corner. It was fifty cents more than Mrs. Hawkins’ room but would be vacant about the time she needed it, so she took it tentatively, and went back quickly to Miss Leech’s apartment to look disconsolately around its comforts and tell the canary sadly how she was going to miss it when her vacation was over. If she didn’t have to have a warm coat this winter she could get a better room, but she must have a coat that was really warm.

  So she put the thought of a homelike room out of her mind and sat and read Miss Leech’s best books, trying to absorb all the pleasure possible so that it would last through the winter that was to come.

  Yet while she sat enjoying herself and trying to forget the time that was swiftly coming when she could no longer sit in comfort and read the best books and listen to a good radio, Kent Havenner was worrying himself greatly about her. As he walked the streets or went about outside the city, his eyes were always alert, thinking perhaps he would come upon her. The news that she had been ill troubled him. He didn’t understand why it was, but he could not get away from the look in her eyes when she had said that all her family were dead. She had seemed so alone, and so quiet and self-contained as if she expected so little out of life and wasn’t even getting as much as she had expected.

  He tried to put the thought of her out of his mind. There wasn’t anything more he could do about her until her vacation was over, but it kept coming to him, what if she didn’t come back? What if they never found her? Would he have to go on thinking of her and that sort of resigned unhappy look in her eyes?

  His sister Audrey had been away in Maine for a few days, but the day she got back he took her for a walk on the beach, eluding the incessant cousin who would have accompanied them, and when they were a good distance away from the house he began:

  “Say, Audrey, are you going up to town someday pretty soon?”

  “Why, yes,” said Audrey, considering. “I was thinking of going tomorrow unless mother has other plans. Why for?”

  “Well, I wish you’d do something for me. Go see if you can find your button girl. She’s disappeared!”

  “Kent, what do you mean?”

  “Jane Scarlett! She’s disappeared I tell you, and it’s important that she be found.”

  “Disappeared? What do you mean? On purpose? Kent, she hasn’t done anything they want her for, has she? I mean I’m sure she hasn’t, and if anybody’s hounding her for anything and wants me to help, I won’t and that’s flat.”

  “Now look here, Audrey, did I say anybody was hounding her? Did I give you any reason to suppose she was wanted by the police? Well, she isn’t at all. She’s just wanted. That is, there’s a letter for her that she ought to have, and it’s been the rounds and got back to the office with an inscription that she’s unknown.”

  Audrey looked up startled.

  “You don’t mean it, Kent.”

  “S’the truth, kid. And I went myself to the address she gave me and they said she’d left. And then I went to the store and they told me she was on a vacation.”

  “You mean you’ve really seen her and talked with her, Kent? I thought perhaps you had just been joking. Did you talk with her?”

  “Sure thing, sister. Had a very dignified interview.”

  “Was she frightened?”

  “Not in the least. What was there to be frightened about? I went to Windle and he sent for her. I told her I was a friend of Windle’s collecting statistics about a family, and I wanted to ask her some questions.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “Cool as you please. She looked me through and through and then answered everything I asked her as quietly as you please.”

  “Well, is there any great hurry about it? Why don’t you wait till she gets back from that vacation, if it’s genuine?”

  “That’s it, sister. I want you to find out for me if it is really genuine. I want you to go to the button counter and ask for her, and if they still say she’s on vacation just get friendly with the other girls and find out when she really is coming back, and where they think she went. You could do what I couldn’t, you see.”

  “Yes, I suppose I could,” said Audrey. “But I think you’d have to tell me a little more about the affair before I’d be willing to get into this at all. If I thought they were going to get her into any trouble I wouldn’t touch it. I liked that girl.”

  “No trouble at all, kid. It’s just an estate being settled up and they are trying to get information about other members of the family that may be living.”

  “Did you tell her that?”

  “No, I told her only that we were getting statistics. I think she gathered that it was for a book, a family tree or something. I was not supposed to tell the nature of the affair. I was only a go-between, you see.”

  “You’re sure she wasn’t frightened?”

  “I don’t think she was. Not after I began to ask her questions.”

  “What did you ask her?”

  “Her name and where she was born and the names of her father and mother and where they were born and married and died, and the names of h
er grandfather or any cousins, et cetra. she had.”

  “Well, that oughtn’t to have frightened her,” said Audrey thoughtfully. “All right, I’ll try and find out where she is. But don’t tell Cousin Evalina, and don’t let’s talk about her at the table, because I really mean to invite her down here to stay over the weekend, sometime, and I don’t want Evalina barging in and making a fool of you and the girl.”

  “I should hope not,” said Kent fervently. “But say, I don’t blame you for being enthusiastic. She’s some girl. She has an air as if she was to the manner born and then some. Isn’t exactly pretty, either, but might be if she had the money or at least I got that impression.”

  “Well, I should say you’re about as quick at judging character as you think I am. But I’m glad you agree with me. Come on, let’s get back to the cottage. If I’ve got to go to town tomorrow I’d better get busy getting ready.”

  Chapter 8

  One day in the second week of her vacation Jane turned on the radio and heard a woman’s voice speaking. It said:

  “If you are sad and weary and questioning what life is all about, if you want to find an answer that will satisfy, and help you to go on amid disappointments and hardships and loneliness, come to Mrs. Brooke’s Bible hour at seven o’clock every evening in Bryan Hall, for a time of real help and comfort.”

  Somehow that little invitation seemed spoken just to Jane. It voiced her own longings and promised something that she did not know where else to find. A great desire came to her to go and see what it was, and if it would indeed bring peace to her troubled soul.

  She found out that Bryan Hall was only three blocks away from Miss Leech’s apartment, and she resolved to go that very night and listen. To that end she ate her dinner earlier than usual and was at the place appointed before seven.

  As she entered the hall she was handed a little red book, which she found to be a copy of the gospel of John. She turned the pages over interestedly, and there was her own fourteenth chapter, “In my Father’s house are many mansions—” It made her feel right at home. And then a sweet-faced woman came to the desk and bowed her head in a short, tender prayer that made God seem very present.