Spice Box (11 page)

M
artha Spicer felt that it was good to get down in the heart of the city again and enter the old store. She felt as if she had been away from it for a year, though it had really been only a few days. Many of the old clerks looked at her and smiled, and some of those who didn’t know her so well hardly realized that she had really gone. There was something strange about it though, going around in her old aisles, watching another woman in her place facing a stout old gaudy purchaser who was insisting on returning some silk underwear after it had been worn.

She had been away only a little over a week and yet she felt superior freedom when she looked about on their tired faces, watched the flying hands putting up goods and stacking boxes for the night. Another day was almost done and they were nearly free again to live their own lives for a few hours. She knew exactly how they felt. She had always felt so. And now she was out of it all. Had she actually dared to be restive and unhappy in the house and with the fortune that had made her freedom possible? She was a fool and an ingrate.

There was a smile on her face as she walked among her former workers. They turned weary eyes of surprise after her as she passed from their midst.

“Well, my word! Did you get on to the smile?” called one salesgirl to another as she smoothed rumpled stockings into their boxes.

“Sure I did! What do you think of that? Isn’t that the limit? Spice Box
smiling
? I never expected to see that. I didn’t suppose she
could
smile. She musta found a silk lining to her nest. Well, I don’t blame her. If I could get out of this dump, I’d smile, too, wouldn’t you, Nannie?”

“Sure I would,” answered Nannie, patting the bunch of curls over her forehead to make sure they were engaging as she saw a young man coming down the aisle, headed her way.

And yet both of these girls had fairly agonized to get these jobs less than a year ago!

“What you going to do? Join a reading circle?” asked an insolent boy at the book department when Martha asked for her Roman history. He hadn’t forgotten how Martha Spicer had once called him down for having a bit of fun when he ought to have been working. He remembered her biting sarcasm.

The color rose in Martha’s cheeks and she almost opened her mouth to make a sharp answer, but as he grinned at her, some motion or a look on his lips reminded her of Ronald just after he had turned on his heel to “beat it” and given that fearful whistle. Then she remembered he was only three or four years older than Ronald and closed her lips. After all, she was no longer connected with the store and had no right to speak. She lifted her eyes to the young man’s face. He was white and thin, with dark shadows under his eyes. He didn’t have Ronald’s ruddy color. She recalled that this boy was supporting a widowed mother and had to struggle to make both ends meet. Suddenly a miracle happened in her heart, and she smiled up at him as if he were a comrade.

“I don’t know but I shall, Albert,” she said. “I haven’t quite decided what I will do. I’d like to have you come and see me sometime if you are ever anywhere around near me.”

Albert’s face was a study of wonder.

“Gee! I will!” he answered heartily. “That’ll be great! I’ll come to supper sometime. May I?”

It was like Albert to invite himself, but it was not like Martha to answer with a smile and say, “Do!” cordially and give him another smile as she took her package and went her way.

It was strange, she thought, but that boy Ronald seemed to be in the back of her thoughts all day and to change the look of everybody. Was it the boy-charm that the article in the paper had talked about? Whatever it was, it made the going back to the little brick house not half so desolate as it had been before.

And there would be her new picture and the candlesticks and Ronald and Ernestine. She actually felt a warmth in her heart for the cat! It was astonishing!

She paused at a counter near the door where they were selling pictures at reduced rates, and there was a picture of a bullfight! And right beside it a splendid etching of a great stealthy lion stealing along the jungle. Something told her those pictures belonged with the Colosseum and the brass candlesticks. They were framed in dull brass beading.

All the way home she blamed herself for having spent good money for useless junk. She did not know they were well-executed masterpieces of great artisits, but in spite of her self-reproaches, she felt an exultation that she had them.

There were chops for supper that night, two of them, and a roasted potato. Ernestine had a chop to herself and sat with her tail curled around her feet, chewing away contentedly.

After the dishes were washed Martha went eagerly to the Roman history. The glistening new binding intrigued her, and her solitude did not seem half so forlorn now that she had something to do.

It was eleven o’clock when she finally closed her book and decided she ought to go to bed. Not that it mattered so much when she didn’t have to hurry off to the store in the morning, but still she felt as if she had been self-indulgent.

She went to bed with the pleasant reflection that tomorrow’s delivery wagon would bring those pictures, and she would have something to show Ronald as well as something to tell him about the Colosseum. But would he come without a lure of gingerbread? Of course it wouldn’t do to offer gingerbread again so soon. She must think up some errand for him to do for her.

But she did not have to lure Ronald with gingerbread. He appeared at the kitchen door promptly the next morning with a cheery whistle and an impudent boy-knock, the kind that seems to imply that he owns the place and expects you to open at once.

He bore over his shoulder a great branch of dogwood blossoms, which he had arisen early that morning to get, and handed them to her quite casually.

“I thought you might like to see these,” he said with a flourish. “I was out of town a ways last night and they looked real pretty, so I clumb up the tree and got ’em for you.”

“Oh, thank you so much, Ronald. They are lovely!” said Martha, her face shining with pleasure. She was pleased as a young girl with flowers from her young man. It had been a long time since anybody had brought her flowers. “Come in. I was just wishing I could see you. And suppose you help me put this branch over our picture first. I’ve got a little bottle that will about fit around that branch, and I can fill it with water and keep the flowers fresh a long time if I watch and keep the bottle filled.”

“Gosh, that’s an idea, isn’t it?” said the boy. “Wait! I’ll get the stepladder. It’s in the cellar.”

Martha laughed.

“I guess you know where my property is better than I do.”

The boy grinned.

“Well, I know the cellar all right,” he said.

So they arranged the bottle behind the picture frame and stuck the branch in the water, at such an angle that it swept out over the ugly wallpaper and made a lovely bright spot of beautiful blossoms, giving a festive air to the whole room.

Ronald stood back and surveyed the finished work.

“Some class!” he said. “That picture’s all right! You say that’s a real place?”

“Yes,” she answered eagerly, “it’s Rome, Italy. I bought a book about those old ruins yesterday, and now I can tell you all about it if you have time to spare pretty soon. I’ve bought two more pictures, too, that I think you will like. They are to be sent up today.”

“I’ll come,” he said tersely. “It’s about school time. I guess I better beat it.” He turned to hurry away. “So long!” And he was gone.

After he left, Martha stood for some time looking at the beautiful white blossoms, her heart swelling with a new joy. The boy had taken the trouble to climb a tree to bring her those flowers!

She spent the morning going over the house and doing away with a number of archives that hurt her esthetic soul, and felt better when the rooms presented a less cluttered appearance.

“If it wasn’t so small and dark and ugly,” she sighed as she looked around, with Ernestine purring about her feet. “I feel as I can’t breathe, Ernestine, don’t you?”

“Meow!” said Ernestine fervently.

“Well, we’ll have to do something,” said Martha aloud. “We might paper the walls with some light paper, perhaps.”

“Meow!” said Ernestine again, and then—“Meow—but if you
should
, put in a fireplace!”

“Why yes, of course,” said Martha. “It would be all to do over again if we papered first. We better wait till we decide. If only we could get rid of some of those partitions and have some space!”

“Exactly—Meow!” declared the cat.

Ronald breezed in about five o’clock to see if the furnace man had done his work right. The new pictures had come, and he hung them, and admired them very much apparently, but all he said was, “Some class!”

Then he said, quite casually, “I might bring a fella down tonight if you’re going to be home.”

Martha hesitated. Ronald was one thing, but a “fella” was another. Her old prejudice about boys arose and protested to her, but the look in the boy’s face, though enigmatic, was eager, and she said, “Why yes, I’m going to be home.”

“He’s a arch-iteck fella, just started, and he wants a job bad. He’s all right. You’ll like him.” The boy was off again, leaving her standing with a troubled countenance, looking around on her rooms in a kind of ecstatic consternation.

An architect! And she couldn’t even make up her mind whether she wanted anything done to the house or not! It seemed too soon after taking possession, anyway, for her to begin to make changes. It seemed hardly decent.

Yet, if he really
did
come, there could be no particular harm in asking him a few questions, finding out what such things would cost. Then, if the price was high, that would help her to put the idea out of her head. Thus she reasoned with herself. Yet all day she was aflutter, staring at the walls and thinking how it would look if they were down; trying to fancy a staircase with landings, and a bay window with a seat and geraniums on the window shelf, white muslin curtains! And how would Ernestine regard the advent of a canary in a brass cage? A canary singing while the yellow sunshine played in the now dark hall and parlor, which would be thrown open to the light?

And what about a big, wide window below the staircase, more toward the front of the house? A window with a single large pane of plate glass and a wide cushion seat below it? With low bookshelves on each side and a bit of a statuary on the top shelf. Her soul suddenly longed for a little head of Joan of Arc she had seen when passing through the art department at the store, a face of uplifting sweetness and purity. Such a face as that in a room would be an inspiration. Perhaps someday she would buy that lovely bit of art just for a centerpiece and inspiration for her home. That would be another story to tell Ronald. She would like to see his eyes when he looked at the holy beauty the artist had put into the eyes of that marble face.

By seven o’clock she had got herself into such a state that she started at every noise. It almost seemed, too, as if Aunt Abigail and Uncle Jonathan had come in and were sitting on the two opposite big rocking chairs with folded hands and severe brows, as they used to sit and ask her polite questions about herself on the few occasions when she had visited them. It seemed as though they were watching to see what she was going to do to their property now that they had gone where they could no longer control it. She almost decided to call to Ronald over the fence and tell him she was going out that evening and could not see his architect friend. Then she wavered and tried to decide what questions she would ask him if he came.

No one would have recognized the former composed head of the Underwear Department in the flushed face of Martha Spicer as she opened the front door to Ronald and his friend.

The architect was young and inoffensive. He bowed deferentially and followed Ronald into the stuffy little parlor, which, in spite of the glowing lamp in the middle of the mahogany table, had the air of continually approaching you to smother you with its surrounding nearness.

He cast a quick glance around as if to get ready for any questions that might be asked of him. She could see he wanted to please her.

“You are intending to make alterations in your home?” he asked embarrassedly.

Martha caught her breath at the bald statement.

“Well, I am
thinking
of it,” she said with a reassuring smile at Ronald. She didn’t want to let him down. “I wanted to find out whether what I want would be feasible, and what it would likely cost. It will probably be far beyond my pocketbook, however, and it seems hardly fair for you to take your time to talk about it until I am a little more certain.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said the young man. “I’m glad to take all the time you want, and I’m sure I can do it as cheap for you as anyone else, and do good work. You’ve got a good solid house here to start with. The boy said you wanted to take out some partitions and put in some windows.”

“Yes,” said Martha, catching her breath as the daring idea was launched into words.

“I should think it might be done without great expense,” said the young man. “May I look around and see just what partitions there are?”

So they started on the rounds and Ronald sat back in a big chair and watched and listened. Ernestine came and jumped in his lap, and he sat there tickling her under her chin as she purred contentedly. The voices of the architect and the householder came pleasantly from the dining room, and Ronald studied the pictures over the mantel and dreamed his boy-dreams about the bullfights and lion hunting, glad in the thought that he was serving his two friends by thus bringing them together. He had no doubt but that Miss Spicer would enjoy her house better if it were made over, and he was sure it would help Bill Roberts to take his sick baby to the shore and pay for his doctor’s bill. It gave him pleasure to help such things on.

They came back presently into the living room, and the architect got out a pencil and paper and drew a rough sketch of what could be done.

Martha watched, fascinated, as the windows she had dreamed of and the staircase appeared on paper as if by magic, with here and there a windowseat or china closet tucked in. And then the crowning touch of all, the big stone fireplace, made of rough cobblestones but dignifying the place wonderfully. Did Ernestine understand that, and did she envision a flickering fire for her to sit beside and dream? She uttered a soft “Meow” as she nestled down in Ronald’s lap as though everything was going all right for that fireplace and there was no need to worry any longer. She had “Why worry?” written all over her furry countenance.