Spice Box (14 page)

And meantime in Boston, change had come again to Janice.

The old lady for whom she had been caring suddenly took pneumonia and died, and Janice’s work there was over. The daughter announced her intention of selling the house and going to a hotel for a time, after which she planned to take trips wherever trips were possible in these wartimes. But definitely she would be going to the shore, to the mountains, and to Florida or California in the winter.

So she would no longer need the services of Janice.

Janice packed her few belongings and tried to think where to go, what to do. It wasn’t as if she were penniless, for she had been paid a small salary, though the suggestion of the conductor that she would be paid whatever she asked had not come to pass. The Whittiers had not proved as generous as he’d thought. But she had some money and need not feel that she was going to starve if she didn’t get a job immediately. She had had to buy some clothes, for she had brought so very little with her from Enderby. But God had cared for her so far, He would guide her and would bring her something to do. She was not afraid.

And she was glad to get away from these people. The querulous invalid she had cared for had demanded her presence day and night, almost continually, and she had been exceedingly hard to please. Janice was very tired. She wanted to rest a few days before she decided what to do.

So Janice looked up a few trains to places she thought might be comparatively safe from meeting Herbert, and was ready to start. Then she heard herself called by Miss Whittier.

“Nurse, the doorbell is ringing. Would you mind answering it? I can’t think what that stupid Katie is doing that she doesn’t answer it. She surely must see I’m expecting a caller and I’m not quite ready to go down. If it’s a gentleman take him in the small reception room, please, and say I’ll be down in a minute. He always expects me to be late anyway.”

She laughed pleasantly, and Janice hurried down to the door. It was the first time since she had been with these people that she had been asked to do any service outside her profession, and she couldn’t refuse. Besides, she was leaving at once. She had already said good-bye.

She opened the door with her mind still dwelling on the unusual friendliness of Miss Whittier, and there before her, dapper and trim, his whole attire the perfection of what a man of the world should wear, his handsome face haughty and expectant, stood her brother-in-law!

As she stood there in the doorway and looked up for one swift second, it seemed to her that all the forces of her body were suddenly paralyzed. She had visions of herself fainting at his feet again, and this time with no friendly doctor to rescue her from his presence. She must not,
must not
faint! She must be calm. Perhaps he would not recognize her in this simple dark blue dress. Anyway why should she fear him? He had no power over her. Or—had he?

With a tremendous effort she rallied and, stepping to one side in the shadow as he entered, reached her hand for his card, and tried to speak in a servantlike voice.

“Miss Whittier will be down very soon. Step into the reception room, please.”

She did not look up, but she felt him start and look at her curiously as she spoke. She motioned toward the reception room and hurried away up the stairs. She knew he was still standing in the hall watching her as she went up, and her trembling limbs could hardly carry her. She laid her hand on the railing and tried to steady herself. But just as she reached the top step, she heard his voice calling her from the foot of the stair, guardedly but distinctly. “Janice! Janice!”

She reached the top of the stairs now and was almost reeling with fright. What if she should fall backward, now that she was almost out of his sight! She took one more step and was on the top landing. Could she keep back this blackness that was swimming before her eyes until she reached a place of safety?

Miss Whittier was much too absorbed in her makeup to notice the whiteness of Janice’s face, the wildness of her eyes, as she laid the card on her dressing table and slipped silently to her own room.

She set her hat quickly on her head, seized her overnight bag and purse that lay ready, hurried down the backstairs and out at the rear door, escaping through the driveway behind the garage. She was thankful that Katie was having a conversation with the garbage man over the back fence and did not see her. She hurried down the next street and boarded the first bus that came along.

This was the now the third time that she had escaped from Herbert, and suddenly it seemed to her that she must from now on be in perpetual flight to escape him. How did it happen that he was everywhere when she tried to hide from him? She had thought Boston far enough away from his home to be safe from him.

She began to reflect. It must be that he was the young man who had been calling on Miss Whittier from time to time all winter. Oh, poor soul! Could it be that she was going to be caught in his coils the way her sister Louise had been? Perhaps she ought to have warned her. But it wouldn’t have done any good. Her word against Herbert’s never had counted. And she would not have been the only one to suffer. Miss Whittier would never have believed it.

The bus had gone some distance before she realized that she had no idea where she was going. But why not just stay on it until it reached somewhere that might give her an idea? Perhaps she would just go till she found a place that attracted her. She would ask her heavenly Father to show her the way.

“Are you a Fall River passenger?” asked the conductor’s voice at her elbow.

She started and answered, “Why, yes!” Well, why not? She paid her fare and sat back comfortably, trying to get calm. She was away again and was surely safe for the present. Fall River. It would be a quiet boat ride, and she could get rested and think. When she got to New York she could go almost anywhere she chose.

So, while Herbert Stuart was trying to calm himself in the little reception room, and get rid of this vision of Janice that continually haunted him wherever he went in spite of the cure he had just completed, and while he prepared his mind to pay court to Miss Whittier and win her over, fortune and all, Janice was riding quietly down the river in the boat and thanking God that He had saved her once more.

M
artha Spicer had an impulse to open the upper window and look down to see who might be at her front door at that late hour, and if she had, perhaps this chapter in her life would never have happened, for it is easier to be hard-hearted from a height than face-to-face with misery. But there was nothing of the coward in Martha, and if there ever had been, her business training would have taken it out. All her lifelong she had forced herself to face unpleasant duties and look them squarely in the eye. The fleeting thought that a caller at so late an hour in the evening boded no good to her was not permitted to remain in her well-ordered, highly disciplined mind.

She therefore replaced the four hairpins she had taken from her abundant gray locks and, shutting her lips firmly on any excitement she might have felt at the ringing of her bell, went downstairs, turning the light on ahead of her as she went.

The second, feebler clang of the bell stopped at the illumination, and the lady walked to her front door, gaining confidence as she went. She even grew cheerful at the thought that it might be Ronald come back for something he had forgotten.

She flung the door wide as if to assure herself that she was afraid of nothing. And there on the doorstep in the full glare of the hall light stood a white-faced girl, looking at her with eyes that seemed to be full of appeal and terror.

“Would you let me come in a minute and tell you something?” the girl said, her voice low and sweet.

There must have been something in Martha’s face—it was perhaps her store-face she was wearing—that told the girl she was going to say no, for while she hesitated the girl went on pleadingly.

“I
must
come in,” she said desperately. “I
must
tell somebody, and I don’t know anybody else. A boy told me this morning to come to you.”

Ah! What magic was this? A different look began to dawn in the lady’s face. Her hand had been on the door drawing it shut, but now she swung it open again.

“A boy told you to come to me?” she asked in awe, as if the sentence had been a talisman, an open sesame to her heart and home. “What sort of a boy?”

“He was a big, nice-looking boy with dark hair, lots of it, all tossed up over his forehead, and big blue eyes with long curly lashes. He said, ‘You go to her. She’s a good scout, and she’ll tell you what to do,’ and I’ve waited around here all day, hoping you would come out the door, to see if I dared speak to you. But I couldn’t get up the courage till just now to ring your bell. I hate so to trouble a stranger. But just now a drunken man spoke to me, and I was so frightened. Oh—” The girl looked furtively behind her as if she feared he might still be lurking near.

“Come in,” said Martha, swinging the door wider open and casting a hasty, defiant glance into the darkness of the street. “Come in, quick!”

The girl stepped into the hallway shyly and gave a keen look around to make sure the place was all right. Martha slammed the door shut hastily and pushed the big bronze bolt and chain before she turned to survey her unexpected visitor.

“Now,” she said with her don’t-you-try-to-cheat-me-for-you-can’t-do-it air on. “Tell me all about it. How does it happen that you are walking the street alone at this time of night? You’re only a very young girl. What are your father and mother thinking about, to let you wander around like this?”

The color flickered up in a faint wave over her pale cheeks and then retreated, leaving her face whiter than before.

“Mother and Father died over ten years ago,” she said sadly, “and my only sister died last winter.” She spoke in a dull, hopeless voice. “I came here four weeks ago, hoping to get some work to do. I had had a little training in nursing, but not enough to do me any good, especially without recommendations. And I had studied stenography a little, and typing. I used to do typing for my father when I was quite young. But I found I couldn’t get a job unless I had graduated from some school of stenography that would recommend me. I only had money enough to get here. I thought if I could get to a big city I would have no trouble finding something, but I’ve walked the streets, and even been to other towns, and couldn’t find a thing! I only had five dollars left when I paid for my ticket to this city, and that’s been gone three days now, though I’ve been careful, eating only milk and crackers, or something very cheap. But I can’t find a thing! I suppose I look pretty shabby, but I can’t help that until I can earn some money. I spent my last five cents yesterday morning for a glass of milk and two crackers they gave me with it. This morning I started from the downtown station, where I stayed all night, to walk out here to answer an advertisement I saw in a paper that a man left on the waiting room seat, but when I got there someone else had taken it. It was a kind of waitress job, in a restaurant, but he said anyway I didn’t look stylish enough, and besides I had to furnish my aprons or make a deposit of five dollars to pay for them. I couldn’t have done that, of course, and so I came out. I am afraid there were tears in my eyes, and I guess the smell of the food in the restaurant made me feel rather ill, and I stumbled and sort of fell, and that boy came and took hold of me and took me into a drugstore and made the man give me smelling salts. Then the boy ordered me a cup of tea and some toast and said if I didn’t feel all right for me to come down here to this house, that you would help me feel better and tell me what to do.”

The girl caught her breath and reached her hand to the stair railing as if she thought she was going to fall again, and Martha’s heart smote her. Ernestine, too, chose that very minute to appear at the top of the stairs inquiringly, surveyed them a moment and then descended hastily, with soft plush-padded footfalls, as if it were a matter that demanded her personal supervision.

“You poor child!” said Martha Spicer suddenly, drawing the girl into the parlor and turning on the light. “Sit down.” She guided the trembling girl to Uncle Jonathan’s big chair and put her into it.

The girl sank back whitely against the patchwork cushion as if she had reached the limit of her strength, and her eyes fell shut as if they never wanted to open again. Martha saw the blue-veined temples and the hollow dark circles under the sweeping lashes. She saw the lovely disordered hair under the little crushed black velvet hat, and the delicate refined features of the sweet face.

“Wait! Sit still!” she said. “I’ll get you a cup of soup!” She hurried to the kitchen, Ernestine trotting after her with a show of bustling haste, after nosing about the feet of the stranger and deciding she was all right.

Martha lit the gas stove, put on the kettle, poured some soup into a bright little saucepan, and began cutting some bread for toast when she heard a clear, piercing whistle in the region of the back fence.

She opened the back door quickly and called, “Ronald! Is that you?”

“Sure is,” said Ronald, appearing over the fence. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Why, I just wanted to ask about a girl who came to see me just now,” she said in a low tone going over to the fence. “Did you happen to send her to me?”

“Oh gee! Did she come? I meant to ask about her and forgot. You see, I found her on the sidewalk leaning against the fence this morning. She was all in. I took her to the drugstore and got her some kind of dope and then something to eat, and when I had to beat it I told her if she didn’t feel all right pretty soon to go and tell you about it, and you would tell her what to do.”

“Yes?” said Martha. “Well, she’s come! Then you don’t know anything about her?”

“Not the first thing!” said Ronald cheerfully. “Only she seemed a good sort and was all in. I thought you’d fix her up or find out if she was crooked.”

Martha surveyed her newly acquired man-of-all-work fixedly and perceived he had not the slightest perception of the situation. Suddenly she realized that his standards were all so different from hers. He wouldn’t realize what he had done. But it occurred to her that perhaps his natural instincts were more human than her own. He had found a girl who was “a good sort” and a woman whom he thought was “a good scout,” and he had brought them together, that was all. Perhaps she ought to be thankful for the privilege of ministering to this waif of the street.