So he whistled cheerily as he went up the walk to the little old house that looked so desolate on the outside and was so cheery and shabby inside.
His father looked up at the sound and said to his mother, “Our boy is coming through in good shape after all, Mary.”
And she smiled, mother-wise, and said, “I knew he would, didn’t you?”
They had a cheery supper that night in spite of simple fare. The mother was resurrecting all her old recipes, plain, wholesome food, cheaply bought, and deriving its savory taste and smell from the old deftness in seasoning, the trick of long cooking and careful preparation. Perhaps because of its very difference from what they had been eating for years, its simplicity rather charmed the family. Bean soup was made with tomatoes, potatoes, and celery tops, a “mess of pottage” the mother called it. Brown bread, baked apples and cream, even bread pudding with a dash of chocolate to make it tasty. Hash! Yes, they loved it, Mother’s hash. That was different. Mother could make hash taste like stuffed turkey. It all seemed so good, and they were so hungry from their work. For Elise had found a job looking after two small children afternoons after school, and she came in from riding them up and down the streets in their toy wagon, tired and hungry and happy over the fifty cents she had earned. Elise was standing up well under the family calamity.
When they had finished the bean-tomato soup and the baked apples were served, Chris told them in an offhand sort of way about what the manager had said to him.
Chris couldn’t quite comprehend the look of utter joy in his father’s face. He didn’t see why he should be so moved when he tried to speak.
“Chris, Son, that is great. You’ve won a bigger battle this week than ever you won in school or on the football field. You’ve got into the game of life now, and you’ve begun to conquer yourself. You’ve made good in a game you didn’t like and didn’t want to play, and under circumstances that were most trying. Don’t think I haven’t understood.”
“But Dad,” interrupted Chris, “I—you—”
“It’s no use trying to deceive me, boy,” said the father, laying his hand tenderly on his son’s arm. “Your mother and I knew how hard it was for you to give up college and go to work. That kind of hard, uninteresting work, too, and to which you were so unaccustomed. We dreaded it for you more than you possibly could for yourself. We had great ambitions for you, Chris. You know that. You are our only son, and there was no height too high for us to dream of your scaling. But I’ve come to see, through my own humiliations, that one cannot grow strong without being humble. One cannot do great things while self-interest rules. You, my son, have gained one great victory this week over self. I hope it may go on. There are still greater heights to scale. You will have setbacks. You’ll find that self is a hard thing to conquer. It will come alive. But if you have really found that you can set self aside and do the thing well that is hardest for you, you have reached a great place in life. There is but one thing higher than that, and that is to let the Lord Christ come in and take self’s place. If you can learn those two things, I’ll know why God let all this reversal come to us. I have known all along that there must be some reason why we should thank Him for what has come, and now I begin to see a possible reason.”
Chris looked at his father in amazement, a deep embarrassment upon him, a sudden feeling that he had always been a failure as a son in his father’s eyes.
“Why, Dad,” he said huskily, deeply moved, “I didn’t know—I never thought—that you felt that way.”
“Well, I do, Son, and your mother feels that way, too. Go on and win the game of life. Let Christ come into your life as the ruling power, and we will be too proud to contain ourselves.”
Chris thought about it when he went up to bed, thought how his father had spoken in much the same way Natalie had talked. In fact, there were three of them, for there was that minister who had said we must thank God for hard things. The minister, and Father, and Natalie! All saying the same thing. Was it possible that God had been sending these things into his life for a special purpose? Possible that God, a great God—if there really was one—had thought enough of his little individual life, among all the lives of the earth, to turn the affairs of a great bank upside down, and bring changes into other people’s lives, with any thought of its affecting him in his relationship to himself, to life, and to God Himself? And yet, most of the professors and students at college felt that if there was a God at all, He was only a sort of impersonal force. Well, it was worth thinking about. Somehow, the idea did not make him angry either, as it had done a week ago.
He went to sleep thinking about what Natalie had told him of that missionary’s life and bitter disappointments, thinking of Natalie’s face when she had said, “What He permits must be best for us.” And what was that other phrase she used in speaking about the missionary? “He’s only an ordinary man with a great God.”
The last thing he remembered, as he dropped away into slumber, was the earnestness in Natalie’s eyes as she had said it and the way her soft hair fell about her forehead. And he decided that the first thing in the morning, he would tell her what the boss said to him last night. She had got the job for him; she had a right to know that he was making good with the manager.
He hurried through his breakfast, and away, that he might catch her and walk with her to the store, but when he passed her corner, he saw only an ugly-looking young boy standing there, with his hat down over his eyes, peering out and up the street. A quick look ahead told Chris that Natalie had already got the start of him and was far on her way.
The boss was just unlocking the door as he reached the store, and although it was early, Natalie slipped into her glass den at once, with only a little distant smile for Chris, and went to work as if she were very busy.
Chris felt a distant drooping of his spirits. Now, why did Natalie have to act like that? Was it just because those other girls had come in and asked for him? Was she perhaps ashamed of him because he had had such visitors? She didn’t want to be known as having anything to do with him? Well, if she felt that way, he wouldn’t bother her. He held his head high and went to the boss for his orders, unhappiness in his heart and eyes.
They put him to measuring out sugar in small quantities in paper bags. All day long he measured out sugar and rice and put them up in small packages. He worked with set lips and said nothing to anybody. The other men in the store tried to kid him about the “dames,” as they called them, who had come to visit him, but he maintained an unsmiling silence. If they wanted to be ugly to him, let them. He could keep to himself.
He tried to stay his unhappy mind on the words his father had said to him the night before, and on his mother’s satisfied smile, but he had mixed them up so hopelessly in his thoughts with Natalie and her words to him, that he got little help from them. He was hurt deeply by Natalie’s attitude. All day long he kept utterly out of her sight, thereby deepening her feeling that she ought to keep out of his.
For, indeed, the visit of those other girls had affected Natalie more than she realized. It made her feel that she had been entirely right in her decision to have nothing to do with Chris, at least of her own accord. These other girls were, of course, in the same social rank where he belonged. While she never had admired their loud, arrogant ways, she knew that most of the town counted them as standing high in the social scale and would regard her as an outsider. Chris Walton should never have to say it of her that she chased after him after getting him a job in the same store where she worked. As far as she was concerned, she would go her own way quietly, just as she had gone to school. He probably would soon forget she existed, just as he had apparently done while they were in school together.
The free and easy way in which those flashy girls yesterday had marched into the store, as if they owned the earth, and demanded to see him, talking to him in that loud, familiar way, had made her see how utterly out of his world she was. He probably liked these girls. They had been among his crowd in school and
knew him so much better than she did. She had just idealized somebody again, as she was always doing, and getting a hard knock when she came to earth and found them human. If she could only keep herself from liking people so much and making them out to be so much better than they were, it would save her many a hard time.
So, Natalie kept to her glass den, meekly ate her little sandwich at noon, without going for a walk, and sat late at her work in the evening until she was sure Chris was gone. No, nobody, either in the store or out, should ever be able to say that she had chased an aristocrat!
Chris had slipped away out the back door, after hovering in the shadows of the back room, his hat in his hand, watching to see if Natalie would go. She did not even look up. She wanted to avoid him. Very well, then he would not trouble her. So he went out into the dark street with bitterness in his heart again. All the joy of the night before had left him, and he was downright cross and tired and hungry and disappointed. He didn’t care whether he had pleased the boss or not. Self was in the ascendency, and he felt he was being ill-treated by fate or God or somebody. Perhaps it was Natalie.
As he passed the end of Natalie’s street, there he saw that same tough-looking man standing at the corner, watching down the street. Was it possible that he was a friend of Natalie’s? Perhaps Natalie was going out with him? Yet, he knew in his heart, it was not so. And when he had passed on to Sullivan Street, he turned back and saw him still there, looking down the street. And even as he watched, the man started down the street toward the store.
Then a sudden frenzy possessed Chris. That man meant no good. He knew a hard-boiled, tough man when he saw one. Chris hesitated only a second, and then bounded swiftly across the avenue, darted on down Sullivan Street a block, and rounded the corner of the street that ended back of the grocery store. With the swiftness of a trained athlete, he sped till he came to the back of the store and slid through the alley just beyond.
Chapter 11
Chris reconnoitered a moment, peering around the corner of the building. He was satisfied that he had reached there, a full block ahead of the other man, who had loitered as he walked, apparently on purpose. Yes, far up at the next corner, he could see a figure lounging under a street light, looking, just now, back toward Sullivan Street. He was not too late. He peered into the store. Natalie was coming out, fastening her coat. The boss was back in the store arranging cans on the counter for tomorrow. Two other men had been detained to help him. He drew a deep breath. Now, should he walk boldly up and speak to her, or should he let her go and follow at a distance to protect her, if she needed protection, or at least to watch and discover whether she met this fellow as if he were an acquaintance? She had a right, of course, to choose her own friends.
Yet as he considered this, his feet seemed to carry him of their own volition up to the door of the store as Natalie came out, her arms full of bundles.
As naturally as if he had always done it, he stepped up to her and took her bundles.
“Well, you’ve come at last!” he said, trying to laugh naturally, as if she had not kept away from him all day. “I thought maybe you had brought your dinner and overnight bag and meant to stay till tomorrow and save walking home.”
“Oh,” she said, in relieved delight. “Oh, but I thought you had gone home long ago. I was waiting—That is, I thought—”
“All right. Say it! Say you were waiting till I got away so you wouldn’t have to walk home with me. It’s best to be entirely frank among friends. I wouldn’t want to intrude. If you want to know the truth, I did start home. Got away up to the corner of Sullivan Street. I’m not entirely blind. It was plain as the nose on your face that you didn’t want anything more to do with me after what happened yesterday afternoon. And I didn’t intend to bother you anymore, of course, if you felt that way. But when I got up to the corner of your street, I saw a bum standing on the corner right where you had to pass, as if he were waiting. And I couldn’t see having you go there alone, so I sprinted around down the alley and came after you. But, if I’ve made a mistake and he’s a friend of yours, why just say the word and I’ll let you go on your way.”
“Oh,” said Natalie, with a little frightened cry, catching hold of his sleeve impulsively. “Why, I don’t feel that way. I’m so glad you came! He tried to speak to me last night, and I was so frightened I could hardly get into the house. And I didn’t dare tell Mother. She wouldn’t have let me come to the store today. He’s been there for three mornings now, and he called me ‘girlie.’ ”
She caught her breath, and he could see there were tears in her eyes. His heart came right up in his throat, and he felt a great righteous anger stirring in him, but his voice grew calm and manly sounding.
“Well, if that’s the case, let’s cut through the alley and go around the far block and avoid him. I’m here to look out for you. If that dirty sucker shows his face around you, I sure will let him know where to get off. You needn’t worry now.”
He slid a protecting arm within her own, putting her on his right side, away from the watching lounger up the street, and guided her swiftly through the dark alley and up another block where they could not be seen.
“Now,” said he, “if that’s the case, why haven’t you spoken to me all day?”
“Why, I did speak to you. I said ‘good morning’!” Natalie gurgled between a sob and a happy little giggle.
“Like an icicle, you did!” said Chris grimly. “What had I done to you, I’d like to know? Did you suppose I staged that scene in the store yesterday, with me dressed in overalls for the part? Did you suppose I made a date with those foolish girls to get the limelight on me before the boss and spoil my chance of keeping the job? Didn’t you know those girls just did that to get me in wrong? I never did like that Peters girl, anyway. She’s crazy, and Irene is always playing to the gallery. The whole thing was, Irene wanted to get back on me for refusing to take her to a roadhouse one night. She wanted to rub it in that I don’t have any car, now, to take nobody anywhere in. Wanted me to be their chauffeur. Did you hear what she said?”
“I certainly did,” said Natalie indignantly, “and—I didn’t think any of those things about you—I didn’t indeed. I just thought that I—that you—”
“You just thought you didn’t want to appear to have anything more to do with me after all that publicity,” said Chris bitterly. “I understand, and I don’t blame you, but you needn’t look quite so much like an icicle. I won’t bother you if you don’t want to be friends.”
“Oh,” said Natalie, and now he saw she was crying in earnest. “I didn’t think any such thing. I just thought—after I saw those girls all dressed up—and I knew they belonged to the crowd you used to go with—and I knew they wouldn’t recognize me if they saw me, and wouldn’t speak to me if they did—it just kind of made me see that I wasn’t in your, well, social class. And I mustn’t make you think I was chasing you and wanting you to walk home with me and carry my bundles all the time. I hate girls to do things like that. I wasn’t brought up to do so!”
They had come now to a comparatively quiet block of houses, with no one else about, and their steps slowed down.
“Good night! Natalie, I didn’t mean to make you feel that way! Don’t cry!” Chris suddenly fumbled in his pocket and brought out a comparatively clean handkerchief. “Here”—he shifted his bundles, and reaching across them, wiped her eyes awkwardly—“as if anybody could ever think you were like that! Why, Natalie—you’re wonderful! I think you’re just wonderful!”
There was a strange new tenderness in his voice. He had a sudden longing to kiss her on her trembling lips and on her sweet, wet eyes. But he wasn’t a boy who went around kissing girls. His mother had brought him up with fine, old-fashioned ideas of reverence for girls, and he felt a deep reverence now for this girl. So he drew her arm closer within his own, caught her hand in a good strong grip, and struggled for new words to make plain what he was feeling.
And Natalie struggled to get her composure.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I thank you. It’s nice to feel you are friendly and haven’t misunderstood me or thought me forward!”
“As if I could!” he said. “I—why—I think you’re wonderful!” he repeated, failing to find better words to express his admiration. “I think you are the kind of girl I want for a real friend. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, about God passing on everything before it gets to us. Why, how could I misjudge you after that? You’ve done a lot for me. Not just introducing me to the store, though I’m grateful for that, of course. But you—why, you gave me back a decent assurance and faith in somebody, something. God, I suppose. I almost lost it when things began to happen. And then I saw that you, who have lost so many more things than I have, were standing by and believing in Him, and it kind of made me think, and I’ve been lots happier since. I don’t know that I understand things any better, but I somehow feel better. You know, at college almost nobody believed anything much. Besides, you made me see myself.”
“How do you mean, see yourself?” asked Natalie wonderingly.
“Well, you made me see that I had been kind of snobbish. I may as well call it by its right name. You made me see that I had really been a conceited snob. And God, if there is a God who cares about such things, probably had to hand me out all this to show me before I got too hard-boiled.”
“Well,” said Natalie, with a little bit of a laugh in her voice, “I can see you’re just what I’ve always thought you were, and—I’m glad. I hate to be disappointed in people. It’s been just beautiful to have you speak out and be so frank with me, and I can’t tell you how nice it is to have you so friendly. I’ve been awfully lonesome ever since I came to town to live. And I’m so glad you haven’t thought me forward or anything.”
“Well, I’m awfully glad I’ve found you, and I hope we are going to be wonderful friends. What are you doing tonight? Could I see you somewhere? I’d like to talk to you more about this. I’ve been all tangled up, and you seem to understand me.”