Ariel Custer

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Dick had glared at the kitchen door for a minute and then, with a look that promised future return, vaulted the fence, recovered his papers, and went wrathfully on his way. But he had not forgotten the episode though the day had been full of others. And if he had been so inclined, Stubby would have reminded him. Stubby who was his master’s shadow, never losing sight of him from sunup to sundown, now forced to an ignominious cushion with his poor foot in a bandage. Stubby who lay on the foot of his bed tenderly guarded and pampered! Stubby should be avenged!

  The dog stirred and whined in his sleep, and the boy tossed and planned, but finally decided that the offending garbage pail should be the medium through which vengeance should be done. The bone should return to the hand that flung it away. So Dick turned over and went to sleep like a cherub with Stubby’s well paw held tight in his own grubby one.

  Quite early the next morning, while it was yet dark, came a sturdy shadow stealing across the backyards, across the hedges silently, skillfully, until he came within range of Harriet Granniss’s garbage pail. Carefully reconnoitering, he managed quite silently to find that bone and tie it to the doorknob. Then with a noisy clatter he flung the cover of the pail to the brick pavement, and lifting the pail from its high hook where dogs could not possibly maraud it, he sloshed the contents thoroughly and pervasively across the neat gray floor of the back porch and dropped the pail down the steps with a bum and a bang. Harriet Granniss’s head in curlers came forth impressively, but Dicky was far and away down toward the station after his early morning papers by that time, and Harriet’s demands to know who was there rang on empty air.

  It was still too dark for Harriet Granniss to see the havoc wrought, so she withdrew her head and slammed down the window when she discovered her efforts were futile, with the conviction that she had frightened the intruder away. But when at six o’clock she descended the stairs and noisily began her preparations for a virtuous breakfast, she opened the back door to take in the milk, and the whole devastated porch was revealed.

  The view of Harriet Granniss’s face when she first saw it resembled a large black storm at sea with the lightning playing over it. The blackness lasted through the breakfast hour, which began on the usual dot, in spite of the fact that both back porch and garbage pail had been duly scrubbed and were gleaming in their usual freshness. Disapproval sat heavily upon her moist, unhappy countenance, and Emily Dillon was made somehow to feel as if she were the cause of whatever trouble there was.

  Harriet announced the distress toward the close of the meal with her usual fine sarcasm: “Well, we’re beginning to get the benefit of your philanthropy at last, Emily.”

  Emily lifted sweet, dreamy eyes from a plate that was almost as well filled with creamed codfish and potatoes as when it was first passed to her, and smiled pleasantly: “Yes? How is that?”

  It was one of Harriet Granniss’s grievances that Emily never called her by her first name. She always avoided calling her at all.

  She waited until she had poured Emily’s coffee before she answered. She considered it one of her prerogatives to pour the coffee and sit in the seat of mistress, and Emily quickly let her do as she pleased.

  “You would buy morning papers of that little rat of a boy what lives up the street. Smalley, the name is. His mother is that washed-out piece that goes by here Sundays in purple. Well, you ought to have been down here this morning“—Harriet spoke as if it were now nearly noon, although it had but just struck eight—“you would have seen how much gratitude the little beast has. He emptied the garbage pail all over the back porch, and it was filthy! And there was a great big bone tied to the doorknob.”

  “A bone?” questioned Emily. “Whose bone?”

  “Well, I’m sure I didn’t stop to identify the bone,” snapped Harriet. “I had enough to do to get the mess cleared up before the grocery man came. It wasn’t my bone, I’m sure of that! It may have been yours, of course, if you find one missing.”

  Harriet considered this grim humor.

  “I mean,” said Emily again with a worried look, “did it come from our house? Was it a bone from our table? Our meat, you know?”

  “Well, no, I don’t suppose it was,” grudged Harriet. “What difference does that make?”

  “Not much, and yet—if it was brought here for that purpose—”

  “Well, no, it wasn’t brought here for that purpose. If you’ve got to know the exact ins and outs of it, it was a bone a dog brought here, and I threw a stone at him and took his bone away and put it in the garbage pail.”

  “Oh, I see.” Emily ate another bit of fried potato.

  “Well, what do you see?” snapped Harriet. But Emily remained silent.

  “I gave that dog a lesson he won’t forget soon,” crowed Harriet. “He went off yelping up the street with one foot in the air. It’s ridiculous keeping dogs in a town. They’ve no business doing it. If I had my way, all the dogs would be shot!”

  “Oh, poor fellow!” said Emily involuntarily, stopping to sip her coffee.

  “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.

  Chapter 6

  Emily 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 sha
rp 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—”