by Peggy Gaddis
She was saved from the necessity of answering by the arrival of the waiter with their soup. When he had served it and gone, Carey raised her spoon, but before she could more than dip it into her soup there was a slight commotion at the doorway of the dining room and she looked up to see Joel Hunter standing there, his eyes swinging over the well-filled room in search of someone. His eyes met Carey’s and he came toward her with a purposeful step that somehow made Carey want to run away and hide. At the same time it made her want to hurl herself into his arms and beg him to take her away from here.
He was beside the table before Ronnie was aware of his presence. Joel looked down at Ronnie and then at Carey.
“Your father has had a stroke, Carey,” he told her without the slightest attempt to mince words. “Margaret thought you should know.”
Carey was on her feet, trembling, clinging to Joel’s arm with both hands. Dimly she heard Ronnie protesting. Dimly she heard Joel saying, “Keep your shirt on, Norris. She doesn’t have to go back if she doesn’t want to. But she seemed pretty fond of her father at one time. I thought she should know that he may not live out the night.”
“Did I — Joel, was I — to blame?” Carey said, her voice a piteous whisper.
“The scene that you staged for his benefit this afternoon didn’t help any, if that’s what you mean. Would you care to go back and see him? Or do you prefer to go on? It’s up to you.”
“Don’t be a fool — she’s going on with me, of course,” snapped Ronnie.
Carey didn’t even look towards him. “Oh, Joel — Joel — take me to him — ” she stammered.
“Of course,” said Joel and turned toward the doorway, his arm supporting her.
Ronnie caught her arm, whirling her about. “Carey, don’t be a fool,” he cried. “I won’t let you make a fool of yourself by going back.”
“Take your hand off her,” Joel said roughly. The next moment his fist planted itself solidly against Ronnie’s chin and Ronnie went down across the table, which promptly collapsed beneath him, showering him with soup and assorted breads.
Carey didn’t remember anything that happened after that until she was outside in the car with Joel. She sat huddled beside him, her eyes on the road ahead, her body leaning a little forward as though by the sheer exertion of her will she would speed the little car.
When they had travelled a few miles, Joel said, “You can relax, Carey. Your father’s all right.”
She stared at him, dazed, feeling as though she had received a staggering blow. “My father’s — ” She couldn’t finish.
“I lied,” Joel said simply. “Margaret called me. Your father was badly shaken, of course, and he insisted that Margaret call me and tell me what had happened. Your father felt that — well, that you had lost your head and were doing something you’d always regret. But there hadn’t been anything short of actual physical violence that he could do to stop you, and — well, I did the only thing I could think of to shock you into a realization of what you were doing.”
Carey slumped against the seat; she put shaking hands over her white face, unable to credit her senses; unable to believe that Joel was speaking the truth.
And then she was shaken with a little gust of fury at the memory of that moment of terror and despair when she had thought she had lost her father. She looked up at Joel and her voice shook as she cried:
“How dared you? I hate you! To — to frighten me like that!”
“Sorry,” said Joel, and his voice told her that he wasn’t anything of the sort. “But your father and I thought we were justified in taking almost any means to keep you from wrecking your whole life just because of a momentary fit of anger.”
Carey had endured too much that day. The wave of hysteria she had fought so valiantly overcame her, and she burst into tears. Laughing, sobbing, stammering her fury and helplessness, her shame, her complete lack of self-control.
Joel heard her out in silence and when the first fury had abated and she was mastering herself, sobbing a little and trembling, he asked dispassionately, “How long has it been since you’ve had anything to eat?”
The question was so coolly put, so matter of fact, that Carey stared at him, unable to answer.
Joel nodded. “I thought so,” he said and turned the nose of the little car away from the road into a barbecue stand. Leaving her in the car, he went into the small hut and a little later came back with two hamburgers, a bottle of milk for her and a bottled soft drink for himself.
“If you th-think — ”
“Shut up — and eat that hamburger!” Joel cut in sharply. “You can go on fighting afterwards. It’ll give you strength to make more of a fool of yourself than ever — if that’s possible.”
Carey gasped as though he had flung cold water in her face. But the fragrance of the hot hamburger reached her and she grew faint with the realization that she had eaten nothing since noon, and now it was almost ten o’clock. They ate in silence and when they had finished and were driving toward home, she said in a meek voice:
“Thanks for the food, Joel. I was pretty hungry.”
“Don’t mention it.”
She wanted to tell him of the jumbled emotions that had surged through her when she realized that she was running away with Ronnie; wanted to tell him that she had awakened from the bad dream of believing herself in love with Ronnie; wanted to tell him that she knew she had been a silly little fool and to beg him to forgive her. But she was so exhausted mentally and physically, and Joel was being so coldly formal and polite, that she couldn’t quite force herself to speak. She was so achingly tired; and there would be another time when she could explain to him. She was a little afraid of him now, anyway. That was funny, too — only she couldn’t seem to laugh about it.
When he stopped the car at the house there was a light downstairs and the door swung open. In its amber oblong she saw Silas and went stumbling toward him, sobbing a little as his arms closed about her.
“Oh, Pops — I’m such a fool,” she wailed.
“Never mind, baby. It’s all right.”
Neither of them heard the sound of Joel’s car as it went swiftly down the drive.
Silas went up with her to her room, kissed her good-night and wouldn’t listen to anything she had to say.
“Tomorrow’s another day, baby — and we’ll both feel a lot more like talking things over,” he soothed. “You hop into bed now and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll have a general pow-wow tomorrow.”
And, like an exhausted child, she obeyed him, grateful for the blessed miracle of being back here in her own room instead of flying over the road somewhere with Ronnie on her way to a life that terrified her even in thought.
Fifteen
SHE WAS WAKENED the next morning by the gay slash of sunlight across her face and by the pleasant fragrance of coffee and sizzling bacon. She slid out of bed and was half dressed in the white cotton slacks and striped shirt that formed her customary garb before she remembered last night. The sight of her soiled slacks and shirt, kicked into a corner beside her scuffed canvas slippers, brought it all back to her. She sat down on the edge of the bed, with a little sinking feeling at the pit of her stomach. What a fool she’d been, all these months, grieving for Ronnie Norris! When just the first sight of him last night had shaken her belief that she loved him; and her first few moments of listening to him had revealed to her that he was cheap and common.
She had gone careening off with him, ready to seal her life to his — and before she had left the outskirts of Midvale, she had known that she was making a terrific mistake. And hadn’t known how to go about saving herself. Joel’s appearance in the hotel dining room had been the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to her — even though Joel now thoroughly despised her as a mental and moral lightweight. He had made it plain that he thought very little of her behavior. She was hot with shame and confusion. She wanted desperately to tell Joel how ashamed she was and how she had known within the first ten minu
tes of leaving the house that she was making a mistake. But she knew Joel was completely uninterested in anything that remotely concerned her. And that was a thought that brought the tears to her eyes.
“Carey!” It was Margaret’s voice from downstairs, and it was friendly and gracious. “Breakfast is ready.”
“Coming,” Carey called down, trying hard to make her own voice sound casual.
But when she reached the sun-filled kitchen, where Margaret and Silas were waiting for her, she was flushed and uncomfortable and not quite able to meet their eyes. Silas and Margaret were elaborately unconcerned, doing everything possible to make the morning seem as other mornings.
“I — I’m sorry I’ve been such a fool,” she told them both. “I’ve been going around with a chip on my shoulder ever since you came here, Margaret, and — well, I’m terribly ashamed — ”
“Don’t, Carey. I’m the one who should apologize,” said Margaret. “I didn’t realize what a shrew I’d become until — well, until I thought I’d driven you to do something that would ruin your life — and your father’s. But if you’ll forgive me, I’ll try like the dickens to be a little less like a prickly porcupine!”
“Forgive you?” Carey said unsteadily. “I’ve — been worse than you — ”
“Looks as though this might be a right pleasant place to live in from now on,” Silas said quickly, vastly relieved.
“I wouldn’t want you to be too sure of that, Pops,” Carey warned. “If I were you, I wouldn’t quite forget the way to the storm-cellar. Two women in love with the same man mean trouble in anybody’s language!” She smiled at Margaret.
“But if the two women try to realize that the only way to make the man happy is by being ordinarily civil to each other, don’t you suppose they could manage not to keep him in the storm-cellar all the time?” laughed Margaret.
“We could try, Margaret — we could try,” Carey agreed.
“We will, Carey. I’m terribly sorry — ” began Margaret, but Carey cut in swiftly:
“Lets just skip it, if you don’t mind. Pretend it never happened — can’t we?”
“Of course, Carey.”
Carey, going out to the garden a little later, told herself soberly that this was merely a truce between herself and Margaret. They would never by any stretch of the imagination learn to be friends; they were essentially much too different for that. But for the sake of the man they both loved they could, Carey argued with herself, behave a little more like civilized human beings. And she promised herself to see to it that she kept her own share of that bargain, no matter what Margaret might do.
Her thoughts swung then inevitably toward Joel. When she heard a car driving along the road outside she tensed and waited, holding her breath; when the car went on instead of turning in at the drive, her heart fell a little. But each time another car came along, she had that moment of breathless hope, only to be disappointed when the car went on. And it always went on, for it was never Joel.
Not even to herself would she admit the truth about her desire to see Joel. Elaborately, she told herself that it was because she was ashamed of the impulse that had sent her off with Ronnie. That Joel was merely her friend — or he had been — and she wanted his good opinion once more. She shivered a little at the memory of the look in his eyes when he had stood beside the restaurant table and told her that outrageous story about her father. And yet she knew now that if she had really gone with Ronnie, she would have dealt her father a blow from which he might not have recovered. Joel’s story might easily have come true.
It was hard to believe that she could have grieved over Ronnie; that she could have imagined herself in love with him. A man who traded shamelessly on his good looks and personal magnetism, not only to feather his own nest, but to make things supposedly easier for her. He had thought so little of Carey, had held her in such small esteem that he had believed she would share with him the fortune he had deliberately filched from Ann. She set her teeth hard at the shame of that thought.
Somehow the pattern of her days had changed. She no longer hated waking up in the morning to another day here in this old place. She no longer welcomed darkness because it would mean a few hours of forgetfulness, the passing of time. Her interest in the garden had revived — the interest which had seemed to shrivel when first she had known that Ronnie was going to be free of Ann.
She took a new interest in the house, too. Under the busy hands of the carpenters, the plasterers and plumbers, the old place had become a charming country home; green shutters at the front windows, above glowing window-boxes filled with blossoming petunias; crisp curtains at the open windows, shining polished floors, cool white walls, ivory woodwork, new upholstery on the worn but still substantial old furniture. It was hard to believe that this was the bleak, barnlike old place to which she and her father had come on a cold, rainy night in early December.
She walked across the green meadow and up the hill to the Hogan place one afternoon to find Ellen Hogan in the chicken yard tenderly “taking off” a setting hen and her family.
Ellen was scooping fluffy little puff-balls of downy yellow chicks into her apron as Carey came up, and when Ellen lifted her face her eyes were shining a little and her work-roughened hands were gentle as they touched the tiny, soft things.
“Seems like I don’t ever get used to ‘em being so little and soft and downy,” said Ellen as she transferred the baby chicks to their wildly clucking mother, who promptly spread her wings as the little puff-balls sped obediently beneath that shelter. “How’s your pappy this morning?”
“Oh, he’s fine — he’s ploughing,” boasted Carey, seating herself on the edge of an up-turned wheelbarrow and watching Ellen as she brought out a large covered box from which came the unmistakable “cheep-cheep-cheep” of more baby chicks. “What are you doing with those?”
“She’s such a big hen that it seems kind of foolish just lettin’ her run around with fourteen chicks,” answered Ellen. “So I sent in town for fourteen more incubator babies. That’ll give her a kind of respectable-sized family.”
“But won’t she know they aren’t hers? Will she take them?” demanded Carey.
“Some hens’ll take all you’ll give ‘em — some won’t be bothered with none they don’t hatch themselves. Lift up the edge of the coop, will you, Carey?”
She knelt beside the coop and lifted the lid of the box. Ellen spilled out the little, cheeping puff-balls. Instantly the hen began to cluck and the chicks raced to her and under her wings, as though they had known her all their tiny lives.
‘They ain’t never knowed nothin’ about a mother, them bein’ incubator chicks,” said Ellen. “But the minute they heard her voice, they knew she was their mother. Nature’s kind o’ wonderful, ain’t it?”
There came the sound of a car along the highway and Carey straightened, the swift, hot color stinging her cheeks. Even at this distance she could see that it was Joel’s car. For a moment she held her breath, waiting to see whether he was going to turn in at the Hogan gate. When he didn’t her shoulders sagged a little and she drew a hard breath, forgetting that Ellen’s shrewd eyes were upon her, completely unaware that she was betraying herself.
“Disappointed because he didn’t come in?” asked Ellen.
Carey knew she was flushing even while she flung up her head defiantly and asked, “Disappointed? Why should I be?”
“Because Joel didn’t stop, of course — why else? You’re crazy-mad about the man, and there ain’t a mite of use of you tryin’ to pull the wool over my eyes.”
“You — why, you’re crazy!” stammered Carey.
Ellen didn’t even try to control the snort. It was a very fine snort, expressive of a vast amount of disdain as she said sternly, “Carey, ain’t it time you stopped keeping your head buried in the sand like an ostrich, and looked facts in the face? You and Joel are as much in love with each other as two people ever get. Why you go around wasting all this grand time when the two of you cou
ld be so happy plum beats me.”
“You — you’re quite mistaken, Mrs. Hogan. Joel despises me, as of course he should.”
“And why should he?”
“Because I’m — a fool.”
“Shucks! If that was enough to make a man stop lovin’ a girl, there’d never be any more marriages,” snapped Ellen. “My stars and bars, Carey — all girls are fools at one time or another in their lives, and if men ain’t even bigger fools, they know it. So what right has Joel got to stop lovin’ you just because you’ve been like other girls?”
Carey clutched for her dignity, her composure. But the best she could do was to slide off the wheelbarrow and dust her hands with an elaborate air of unconcern. “But you see, Ellen, before a man can stop loving a girl, he’s got to start! And Joel never started loving me.”
“And that’s probably as big a lie as you ever told in your life. He’s been off his head about you ever since you came here to live. Anybody with one eye and half sense could see that. Lots of folks did.”
“It seems to me that lots of folks in Midvale are busy trying to see a darn sight more than really exists,” snapped Carey. “I wonder how it would be if they minded their own business for a change?”
Ellen’s mouth thinned in the faintest of wintry smiles. “Be right dull, I’d think,” she answered, and changed the subject.
Sixteen
LATER in the week she had accepted an invitation from some of her new-found friends for a party on the other side of Midvale. She had gone with a family party, quite content not to have any escort of her own and she had enjoyed the party thoroughly. When it began to break up, one of the girls with whom she had come, said:
“I know you won’t mind, Carey. Joel’s going to drive you home. We have to see that a friend of Mother’s gets home, and Joel says it isn’t much out of his way to drive you home.”
