Romance Classics (50 page)

“But don’t be frightened,” he said, and now his voice was cool. “I assure you I’m a very level-headed guy and there’s not a chance in the world that I’ll forget you’re Miss Winslow, of Park Avenue, while I’m just a small-time medico in a forgotten hamlet. I know my place and I shan’t forget it.”

Anger rose within Carey but before she could speak, Joel was saying briskly, “And now that the fire is burning brightly, what would be your sentiments about breakfast? Personally, I could eat my weight in wildcats — and give the first wildcat the initial bite.”

“There’s coffee in the pantry,” Carey remembered and brought it forth. “And here’s bacon and a bowl of eggs, and bread — ”

“And butter in the safe over there and half a dozen jars of blackberry jam and muscadine jelly and pear preserves,” Joel assured her. “I know because I helped your neighbors stock that pantry for you yesterday. I went around with Miss Ellen, making the collections and she and I brought them over.”

“You mean those people who were here last night — sent these things?”

Joel, busily slicing bacon into a smoking hot skillet, looked at her curiously. “Well, where did you think the provisions came from?” he demanded. “The house hasn’t been occupied in years. And pantry shelves don’t fill themselves automatically — ”

“Then whom shall I pay, if everybody contributed?”

“Pay?” He straightened and frowned at her. “You mean you expect to pay your neighbors — oh, come now, lady, you don’t want to get off on the wrong foot down here. People will hate you.”

Carey stiffened. For a moment she burned, then she said curtly, “My father and I are not objects of charity — at least not yet.”

“Charity?” Joel pushed the pan of crisping bacon back a little and faced Carey, his own eyes angry. “See here, my fine-feathered little friend, why don’t you just forget that chip on your shoulder and start behaving like a human being? These people down here who are your neighbors are — well, just everyday run-of-the-mine people. But out of their goodness of heart, their innate kindness, they have contributed from their own scanty store, not because they think you and your father are objects of charity, as you so deftly put it, but because you are strangers in their midst. They want you to feel you are welcome and among friends.”

Carey listened, her anger melting a little. And when he finished he checked himself with a short laugh and said in an entirely different tone, “And that, if you don’t mind, is much too long a speech on an empty stomach. If you’ll pass me the eggs and see to the toast, we’ll sit ourselves down to a feast fit for a king — if he happened to be hungry — in about two shakes.”

Carey handed him the bowl of eggs and watched him break them with a lavish hand into an omelette that made her mouth water. As they settled themselves at the table Mary came in and joined them.

“I’d no idea you were such a good cook, Miss Winslow,” the woman said brightly.

“I’m not. I can’t even build a fire. Dr. Hunter is the miracle-worker,” Carey said promptly.

Mary laughed and Joel said cheerfully, “We country doctors have to learn to look after ourselves first, you know; otherwise we’d starve to death.”

“You’re a very clever man, Dr. Hunter, and an excellent doctor,” Mary said unexpectedly. “I can’t imagine your burying yourself in this desolate little place.”

Joel helped himself to more omelette and answered her lightly, “It doesn’t seem desolate to me — and people can get just as sick and need a good doctor just as hard in a place like this as in New York.”

“I realize that, of course, but I should think a man of your type would want an opportunity for — well, for wider horizons. Frankly, this place would drive me mad in a week’s time. Train time this afternoon can’t come soon enough for me.”

Carey stared at the nurse in panic. “You — you’re — leaving today, Mary?”

“But of course, child. I was only engaged for the trip down, you know,” Mary reminded her, and then relented a little. “You needn’t be frightened. Your father needs nothing but rest and sleep and complete quiet.”

Carey set her teeth hard for a moment before she was able to steady her voice to say, “I’d say he’d get very little else here.”

JOEL HAD SAID that it didn’t rain all the time in Midvale. But during the week that followed, it seemed to Carey that he had been too optimistic. Day after day the clouds hung low and the rain came down without slackening. She went to sleep at night to the drumming of rain on the roof. All around the bleak old house the ground was a sea of red mud. The trees waved bare blackened branches against the dreary sky, and the wind moaned sadly about the old house, sending shutters flapping, dragging dead branches against the walls with a scraping sound that seemed almost unbearably dreary to Carey.

But she managed to keep her depression and loneliness from her father. Joel insisted that her father stay in bed, to prevent a cold which, in his weakened condition, he might not be able to throw off easily. So, though Silas protested at the work his being in bed made for Carey, he yielded to Joel’s insistence.

Carey came to listen for Mrs. Hogan’s footsteps in the morning; to rely on the kindly, cheerful woman more and more each day. Under Mrs. Hogan’s patient teaching, she learned to build a fire in the kitchen stove; she learned to cook simple things, which, with the things her neighbors were constantly sending in, took care of her father’s and her own needs surprisingly well.

She did not realize how much she had begun to rely on Mrs. Hogan for help with her housework until a rainswept, chilly morning when, at ten o’clock, Mrs. Hogan had not arrived. Puzzled, Carey made what shift she could with the breakfast dishes, with preparations for the noon-day dinner and in cleaning such of the house as was in use.

Later in the day Joel came by for his usual visit with her father, and announced: “Ellen Hogan has pneumonia. She’s — well, I’m afraid she’s pretty bad.”

“Oh — no!” Carey was stricken. “I wondered about her. She’s — she’s — such a fine person.”

Joel’s tired face lit up. “Isn’t she? About two-thirds of this community simply lives on her spirit. I think I admire her more than any woman I’ve ever known. She’s the bravest, most valiant woman that ever lived. She’s endured things that would have flattened a less splendid soul. To look at her, you’d never dream that she’d had to stand helpless and watch her drunken brute of a husband murder her two babies in cold blood, would you?”

Carey cried out in horror, white and shaken.

Joel went on grimly, “Jimmy was five, Billie was three. Fine little fellows. Ellen just about worshipped them. Her older children — five of ‘em — were at school one day when their father came home from a night out. Ellen was outside, feeding the pigs and chickens, and the little fellows were at the breakfast table when their father came in. Ellen saw him cross the back yard and knew by his walk that he was drunk — she ran, but before she could reach the back door he had locked it. And — through the window, helpless, she saw him shoot the two little boys.”

Carey was sick with horror, incredulous that such hideous things could happen. Joel looked up at her, his eyes dark, his face white and set.

“Pretty story, isn’t it?” he commented dryly. “Can you imagine any other woman in the world letting that man live? But there’s a Higher Power that sees to justice in such cases. Less than a week later, while he was still a fugitive, the very day after the little boys were buried, he was killed. The car which he had stolen, and in which he was trying to escape, turned over in a ditch.”

He looked up at Carey and said in swift contrition, “I’m sorry — I shouldn’t have told you. It’s only that — well, Ellen’s pretty dear to me. She’s been almost like a foster mother. I can’t remember my own mother and I sort of grew up under Ellen’s guiding hand. Seeing her down and not being able to do much to help her — it sort of knocks the props out from under me.”

With a suddenness that startled Carey, he was on his feet, his face white and set. “What’s the good of being a doctor and helping other people if I can’t help the one person I want most of all to help?”

Carey was shaken by his helpless anger and bewilderment, but before she could answer he went out the door and into the rainswept, dreary day. She heard the sound of his car starting off with a clashing of gears and a spraying of the gravel of the weed-grown drive, which was entirely foreign to Joel’s usual careful driving.

She could not put out of her mind the story he had told her. Remembering Mrs. Hogan’s cheerful, practical manner, her sturdy good humor, her kindness, Carey found it almost impossible to believe that her life held so hideous an experience. She remembered now, and shivered a little at the memory, the night when her father and she had arrived and her father had asked about Mrs. Hogan’s husband. She set her teeth now, recalling the look on Mrs. Hogan’s face, the tone of her voice when she had said dryly: “He died nine years ago.”

She missed Mrs. Hogan sadly. As she went swiftly and clumsily about the accumulation of duties that seemed to keep her running from the time she crawled out of her warm bed, shivering in the chilly dawn, until, exhausted, she crept back into it at nine o’clock at night, she realized even more how much she missed her neighbor.

The rain and the resultant roads, sticky and hub-deep in red mud, kept her more or less isolated except for Joel’s daily visits. She came to rely on Joel; his every visit brought her some small gift from a neighbor. A jar of jelly, perhaps, or pickles; once a thick, juicy slice of home-cured ham that Joel showed her how to broil, with quartered sweet potatoes, and that was the most delicious food Carey had eaten in a week. Once or twice the gift had been a chicken, dressed and cut up ready for frying, and again Carey and her father had feasted royally. For the rest, they were dependent on such simple foods, mostly out of cans, as Carey had learned to prepare.

Christmas week dawned on her without warning. She got up one morning and looked out of the window, puzzled because the hated landscape looked different. She managed a wry grin as she realized what it was; the rain had stopped, after three solid weeks. A thin-looking, watery sunshine was creeping self-consciously over bare trees and the sodden fields and woods. Her spirits lifted a little.

It was late that afternoon that Joel, stopping by to deliver the grocery order she had given him the day before, said casually, “If you had your ‘ruthers’ which would you ‘ruther’ do — anticipate with glad expectancy, or be taken completely by surprise?”

Carey stared at him, wide-eyed. “‘Ruthers?’” she repeated, puzzled.

Joel grinned. “Would you
prefer
to know about something in advance — or be surprised?” he elucidated.

“I’d rather — oh, I see what you mean — I’d ‘ruther’ anticipate, I think. I hate surprises,” she answered promptly.

Joel nodded. “That’s what I figured,” he said cheerfully. “Then you can anticipate a Christmas Eve party. You’re going to be ‘showered’ by your kind friends and neighbors — and those who are a mite curious to see the inside of a house that an erstwhile New York debutante runs all by herself.”

Carey caught her breath, looked swiftly about her and then almost accusingly at Joel. He met her eyes and said casually, “I just thought maybe you’d like to know in advance.”

Carey’s cheeks burned beneath that very casual speech, and she managed to thank him as he took off. And then she came back and looked at the big, barnlike, dusty living room; at the disordered dining room beyond; the kitchen, cluttered and disordered because, no matter how hard she tried to work, things seemed to pile up.

Having made a tour of the house, she came back to the kitchen, stuffed wood in the stove, and filled kettles and small tubs with water that she put to heat. Her eyes were dark with determination and her cheeks burned at the memory of the look in Joel’s eyes, the ever-so-casual tone in which he had revealed that the neighbors were curious to see what sort of house she kept.

“He was too polite to remind me the place looked like a pig-sty,” she told herself savagely. “But why wouldn’t it? What do I know about keeping house — or care, either, if I have to be truthful, and I suppose I might as well. But I
can
if I have to. So the neighbors want to see what sort of a housekeeper I am, do they? Well, I’ll show ‘em, once and for all. Then maybe they’ll stay out of here!”

It was already late afternoon and the faint sunshine had gone. Darkness pressed close. Yet she was so determined to cheat the neighbors of any chance of gossip that she wouldn’t wait until morning. Her spirit quailed a little at the thought of the work it was going to involve, but she set her teeth hard and went at it.

She gave her father his supper and saw him settled comfortably for the night. Then she donned a pair of slacks, a gaily striped jersey shirt, bound a bright-colored bandanna about her head, and went to work. It was well after midnight before she had finished with the downstairs and had it shining. Her own room was next and though, for a moment, the thought of her bed was tempting, she finished her task.

It was after three o’clock when, using the last of the hot water, she gave herself a not very satisfactory bath in the small portable bathtub and crept into bed so exhausted that she sank almost instantly into a deep sleep.

The following afternoon Joel, returning from his round of calls in the country, stopped for his usual visit. He greeted her with a grin and said lightly, “And what’s all this I hear about your burning the midnight oil to keep your housework caught up?”

“For Heaven’s sake — isn’t it possible to
breathe
in this — this wilderness without people making up a story about it?” she cried hotly.

Joel’s expression altered. “Don’t let it get you down lady. After all, you’re an object of curiosity around these parts.”

“As if I hadn’t been made aware of that every moment since I came here!” she raged. “I hate the whole darned place — and its snoopy people! I wish they’d stay away from here and let me alone!” She had to set her teeth hard to fight back the tears that she felt would have been the final humiliation.