Ariel Custer (6 page)

“Yes, poor fellow! That’s you! I suppose you’ll be wanting to bring a dog home yourself next! But nobody need try to keep a dog around me! If you’d seen that back porch I had to scrub! But you never think of saying poor Harriet. Yes, I suppose that’ll be the next thing I’ll have to be called upon to endure. A nasty little mangy dog!”

“Oh no!” said Emily. “I wouldn’t think of it!”

“Well, I’m going to see that boy’s mother this morning, and believe me, she’ll learn a few things about how to bring up children. And if she doesn’t do something about making that boy apologize, I’ll report it to the police. He
ought
to have been made to clean up the mess. I’d have liked to rub his dirty little freckled nose in the garbage, only I didn’t want the baker to see it when he came.”

“Oh,” said Emily, aghast, “please! I wouldn’t go to the neighbors about a thing like that! Just let it pass! It won’t likely happen again!”

“Yes, let it pass! Let it pass! That’s you all over, Emily! No, indeed, I won’t let it pass. This is part my house, isn’t it? I do the morning work, don’t I? Well, I’m
going
!”

With that she gathered her cup and plate and silver and sailed out to the sink with them, and Emily beat a hasty retreat to her room to reflect on what she could do to prevent trouble with her neighbors. She was very fond of Dick Smalley’s little dog Stubby. She often slipped Stubby a peppermint between the hedge when Harriet was out. She could read a great deal between Harriet’s lines, and she decided to slip up to Mrs. Smalley’s that morning while Harriet went to market and forestall her. Emily was fond of freckle-faced Dick Smalley. She sometimes gave him smiles when she gave Stubby peppermints.

So Emily put on her neat black hat and coat and slipped away while Harriet went to market.

E
mily stopped at the little candy shop on the corner and bought a few peppermints for Stubby.

She had decided to say she had come to buy three extra copies of the
Ledger
if Dick had any left. This would be a good excuse, and then she could gradually find out if Stubby was hurt, and perhaps get it in to apologize for Harriet’s dislike for dogs. She felt she might perhaps be able to extract the sting as it were from anything that Harriet might say about Dick or the dog, supposing Harriet really meant to carry out her threat. She did not really believe that Harriet meant to do what she had threatened.

But when the door was opened to her knock, she found a very small little Smalley sister of Dick’s at the doorknob, and an angry Mrs. Smalley inside talking loudly over the telephone to the chief of police. She discovered to her dismay while she waited that Harriet had preceded her and had done all and more than she had promised to do at the breakfast table and that Mrs. Smalley was now planning her revenge.

Mrs. Smalley turned to her caller with fire in her eye, but Emily Dillon’s smile was disarming: “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Smalley,” she said, “and so ashamed. Mrs. Granniss is very quick, you know, and rather sharp with her tongue sometimes, but she really doesn’t mean all she says—”

“Well, she better not,” bristled Mrs. Smalley. “I’ll have the p’lice on her. Comin’ here, makin’ a fuss about the kid. He’s full o’ the devil I know, but he ain’t meanin’ any harm, an’ he never woulda touched her garbage pail if she hadn’t a stole Stubby’s bone that Dicky bought with his own money at the butcher shop. She said our Stubby was trespassin’, but you can’t always be sure a dog knows his own premises, and anyhow Dicky was only in the next yard a-deliverin’ papers. An’ Stubby wasn’t doin’ her any harm down under the hedge gnawin’ his bone. See him now, poor little soul, a-layin’ there mournin’ fer Dicky ’cause he can’t go out. He tries to get up an’ limp but his leg’s clean broke, an’ it’ll take days to heal so he’ll be the same dog again—”

Emily Dillon was down on her knees beside the little sufferer, petting him and feeding him peppermints, and Mrs. Smalley was soon forgetting her grievances and telling all Stubby’s and Dicky’s virtues; telling what a hard time she had had to meet the payments on her little bungalow since Smalley died; and how Dicky helped her with the washes she took in, and sold papers, and worked for the grocery man out of school hours; and how Stubby barked for them to let the cat in nights, and wouldn’t let a book agent in the gate, and took care of the baby when she was busy; and all the one and another little joys and sorrows of a hard existence from hand to mouth.

Emily Dillon left a five-dollar bill to pay a dog doctor to see Stubby’s leg and be sure it was getting on all right, and another whole dollar for Dicky to spend in peppermints; and while she was there called up the policeman and talked to him pleasantly all about the affair, asking him please not to proceed with any action against Mrs. Smalley—“For it’s really my house, you know,” she said gently. “Mrs. Granniss is only living with me, and she’s terribly afraid of dogs, and rather quick with her tongue.”

She was so pleasant about it all that Mrs. Smalley was smiling and thanking her, and before she left she took her into the west bedroom that she said she wanted to rent “if she could get the right party,” and Emily Dillon was all interest and promised to search for “the right party”; and so they parted friends.

That was how it came that Emily Dillon knew about the pleasant little west bedroom that was for rent so cheap and looked out on a garden of daffodils and pansies, when Jud told her that night—while his mother was at prayer meeting—about Ariel and her need for a home. Ariel who had not succeeded in getting in at the YW because it was all full, with a long waiting list. Ariel who had not yet found a position and might have to go back to Virginia where there was nothing to do to earn her living and only kind friends who had nothing to lend her.

Emily Dillon watched Jud as he talked and grew thoughtful. Presently she said, “I’d like to meet her, Jud. I might know of something for her. I heard about a room—” But she did not finish the sentence. She wanted to see Ariel first.

“Why not go into town with me in the morning and meet her? Miss Darcy let her have her room for tonight, and I can take you to the door and introduce you.”

“I’ll do that, Jud,” said Emily with a gleam in her eyes. Jud smiled back. He felt toward Miss Emily almost as if she instead of Harriet were his mother. He had always had a protective attitude toward his real mother, protective against herself. It was the old reminder of his father, “Jud, she’s the only mother you’ve got,” that made him feel as if he must take care of her against herself. His mother just didn’t always see things as they were, that was all. But Emily Dillon saw, and she knew enough to keep her tongue still.

Neither of them said a word about the expedition to Harriet Granniss at the breakfast table. Emily came down with her hat on and merely said she found she had an errand in town, and Harriet was always miffed by that. Why on earth couldn’t Emily Dillon discuss her affairs openly the way other people did? Harriet Granniss thought it secretive, and it made her downright mad. Besides, she would have gone to town too if she had been asked. But Emily never asked her. She was gentle and polite and kind to her as a housemate, but she did not attempt to make her a companion. Emily went her way alone. That was what Harriet resented bitterly.

Jud went out as soon as he had finished his breakfast. He did not wait for Emily. But they met on the station platform with a smile as though it had all been planned out that way. Jud would have liked to walk with Miss Emily from the house, but he knew his mother would be jealous as a cat so he went ahead.

So Emily Dillon met Ariel and loved her at once.

Ariel was all smiles. She had heard of a job and she was to go to it that day. A man wanted her to look after his office and answer letters. Miss Darcy knew that he was considered all right though rather hard on his help, but she didn’t mind that. It was a job. She was only to get ten dollars a week until she had learned shorthand, and he would pay her fifteen as soon as she could take dictation.

Jud frowned at that and called it starvation wages, but Ariel laughed and said it was better than nothing, and if anything else better came along she could take it. Now she had only to hunt for a room. They seemed hard to find.

Then suddenly Emily Dillon said gently, “There is a nice little room in Glenside for three dollars a week. Could you afford that? It would mean car fare of course, but it is very pleasant, looks out on a garden, and you would have the privilege of cooking in the kitchen if you wanted to.”

Ariel was delighted, and Emily called up from the station and told Mrs. Smalley to hold the room for that evening, that a young woman, a friend of hers, was coming out to look at it and would probably take it at once. In her turn Mrs. Smalley was duly grateful, and Emily went smiling back to her grumpy housemate and finished the day by helping out in a frenzy of housecleaning. When Harriet Granniss was particularly hurt about something, she always cleaned house.

Ariel came out on the train with Jud, who had promised to show her the way to the Smalleys’, and as bad fortune would have it, Harriet Granniss was just finishing off her day by a vigorous shaking of the front door mat as they passed the house.

“Who was that washed-out-looking girl you were with?” she sulkily greeted her son as he came in two minutes late to his supper, with a pleased look in his eyes.

“Miss Custer,” said Jud, looking uncomfortable.

“Custard?”

“Custer.”

“Well, that doesn’t tell me a thing.”

“What do you want to know, Mother?”

“I want to know who she is.”

“Well, I’ve told you. She’s Miss Custer. She’s employed in the city, and she’s living out here.”

“Where?”

“Why, up the street somewhere; has a room and board or something,” said Jud, miserably trying to keep his eyes on his plate and look natural.

“Isn’t she the young lady that is stopping with Mrs. Smalley?” asked Emily Dillon, pleasantly trying to help him out.

“Mrs. Smalley!” Harriet eyed her son viciously as if he had committed some crime. “Do you mean to say you are going with a young woman who lives with a person like Mrs. Smalley?”

“What’s the matter with Mrs. Smalley? I don’t know her from Adam,” growled Jud, his temper rising. “I’m sure I didn’t notice which house it was. It’s one of those up there. And I’m not ‘going with’ anybody, Mother. Is it ‘going with’ someone to happen to walk up from the station with them?”

“Where did you meet her?” demanded the excited mother.

“What does that matter?” The son was beginning to get his stubborn look on. At such times he bore a fleeting resemblance to his mother.

“Well, I want to know.”

“Say, look here, Mother. You’ve made a great fuss because I didn’t have anything to do with girls, and now when I simply walk up from the station with a girl who lives on this same street, you are raising the devil.”

“Judson Granniss! Things have come to a pretty pass if you have to
swear
at your mother! It shows how far things have gone—”

“Mother!” Jud shoved his chair back sharply and arose.

He faced her with stern eyes, and with stern eyes she faced him back, grim and hard and full of jealous, bitter love that was so deep it looked like hate.

After an instant Jud’s face softened, and his habitual self-control took command.

“Mother, you are utterly unfair,” he said earnestly. “I scarcely know this girl at all, yet because I walk up from the station with her you are making a mountain out of a molehill. Besides, suppose I knew her better; wouldn’t I have a right to walk with her as well as with any girl? You have spent time urging me to go with girls, and now the first time I’ve been seen with one, you act like this.”

“Yes!
Such
a one!” sneered Harriet. “I might have known after all I’ve tried to do for you that it would turn out this way. When you do go with a girl, you pick out
one like this
!”

She got out an immaculate handkerchief and crumpled it viciously to her eyes.

“What do you
mean
, Mother?” Jud thundered. He was angry now and thoroughly disgusted. “What do you know about Miss Custer? What right have you to talk that way about a girl who is an utter stranger to you?”

“It’s enough to know where she lives!” declared Harriet with a toss of her head. “That Smalley woman—”

“That has nothing whatever to do with the girl. She rents a room in a decent, respectable neighborhood. She knows nothing whatever about the personal character of her landlady beyond the fact that she has been told she is all right. But I’m sure I don’t see why you have it in for poor little Mrs. Smalley. She certainly is a self-respecting woman with a perfectly good character. She’s doing her best to earn her living and keep her little home for her children since her husband died.”

“Oh yes, her children!
Brats
! That’s what they are! She oughtn’t to be allowed to keep them with her, such language as she is teaching them. I guess you don’t know what that little brat of a boy did to us. Emptying the garbage pail all over our clean back porch! And such vile talk! I wouldn’t soil my lips repeating it. The woman herself isn’t far behind her child. You should have heard how she roared at me when I went to see her about it; and the little girl, only a baby, stood behind the door and stuck out her tongue at me all the time I was there, and the mother never said a word to stop her. Oh yes, she’s a perfectly good, respectable woman of course, and a girl who would live with a woman like that is better of course than a nice, wholesome, healthy, capable girl like Helena Bo—!”

But Jud had had enough. He shoved his chair fiercely away from the table and left the room with as near a slam of the door as Jud ever let himself give in Emily Dillon’s house.

Emily Dillon, by no means relishing the position of witness in a scene like this, swallowed her last sip of coffee and gathered her dishes to make a hasty exit to the kitchen, but Harriet, her eyes streaming with angry tears, her nostrils widely spread like a battle horse, pinioned her with a glance: “Now, what’s the matter with
you
?” she snorted. “You don’t have to take offense in a matter like this, get mad, and go off without eating your dinner!”

“Indeed,” said Emily, fluttering back to her place, “I’ve eaten all I wanted. You’ve been talking, you know.”

“Yes, I’ve been talking. Of course you don’t approve of what I said. That would go without saying. You never do. It isn’t any business of yours of course, but you go around with your head up—”

“You’re mistaken,” said Emily. “I had no thought except not to intrude.”

“That couldn’t be possible,” nagged Harriet, who, deprived of the rightful prey of her son, sought solace in blaming another. “People
have
to think. You
know
that you sided with Jud! You
always
do. I can see it in your face.”