by Helen Wells
Wade stood up, and shook hands.
Gwen burst in, one roguish eye cocked on Cherry.
“I’m sorry but—well, I just had to say hello to Wade!”
She pumped his hand and looked admiringly at the handsome young man.
“Good to see you, Red,” he said warmly. “I always did like those cute freckles. Been taking good care of Cherry for me?”
Gwen made a face at him, then moaned: “Look at that candy! Too beautiful to eat—or is it?”
“Have some,” Cherry said. “You, too, Josie. Why not call in the others?”
“Good idea,” said Wade wanly.
Vivian, Mai Lee, and Bertha came in, all smiles, to greet Cherry’s guest. Wade bore up bravely in the midst of six chattering girls.
“Cherry, we need your help with the dolls. Of course, this afternoon with Wade here—But how about your helping this evening?”
Wade announced: “I’m taking Cherry to the theater this evening. Sorry.”
“Wade!” Josie squealed. “Come and see our dolls!”
“Me and dolls?” The flier squirmed. “Uh—thanks, anyhow.”
But the girls pounced on Josie’s suggestion and insisted that Wade see their collection and their handiwork. They shepherded him down the hall. Cherry’s efforts to rescue him did no good. She followed them, giggling, into the back sitting room.
As the girls held up one doll after another before him, Wade looked bored and then scared. He glanced desperately around, as if seeking a means of escape. Cherry was just opening her mouth to make a second rescue attempt when Bertha Larsen said:
“Wade, you could help with the dolls.”
“Me? Fix up dolls?” Wade was outraged. “The idea!”
“You could at least paste on doll wigs,” Gwen pointed out reasonably.
“Now see here, Red—if you think you’re going to press me into service—Dolls!” He tried to bolt for the door but Bertha blocked the way.
“In fact,” Vivian said, straight-faced, “Wade could even help with the doll clothes.”
“I could not!”
He looked wildly toward Cherry for help, but Cherry had dissolved into silent, helpless laughter.
The doorbell rang, three short rings. Josie ran to answer, and came back in a moment with Dr. Johnny.
“Wade Cooper, Dr. John Brent.” The two young men shook hands. “Johnny,” said Josie plaintively, “will you help us with the dolls?”
“Sure,” said the young doctor. “What do you want me to do? Take out their appendices?”
“No. Help make doll clothes.”
“Uh—well—” Dr. Johnny grinned. “All right.”
Wade stared at him. “You’ll really do it?”
“I don’t think it will hurt a bit,” said the imperturbable Johnny. “No reason why a man shouldn’t know how to sew or cook or mind a baby, is there?” And he settled down to pulling out basting threads.
There was not much Wade could do after that—to Cherry’s huge amusement—but follow Dr. Brent’s example. The sight of big Wade with a doll in one fist and a length of ruffle clenched in the other—Cherry had to bite her lips to keep from laughing aloud.
After about five minutes of diligent struggle with a needle, Wade looked up. “This whole process,” he said gravely, “is inefficient.”
“We haven’t a sewing machine,” Bertha replied.
“I mean the whole idea of sewing these little costumes is slow and inefficient. I just thought of a way that will save a lot of trouble on some of the doll dresses.”
“What is it?” all the girls demanded. “We’d certainly be glad to speed up this job.” Dr. John looked interested, too.
“Model airplane glue,” said Wade. “It sticks like iron and we can glue some of the costumes together instead of sewing them.”
“Triumph!” they acclaimed him.
Wade rushed out and returned a few minutes later with the special glue. It worked. By now Wade was so interested that he worked along all afternoon.
At dinner in a Village restaurant, at a table for two, Wade relaxed.
“I like your nurses, Cherry, honestly. But so many of ’em at once!”
“You did handsomely,” Cherry congratulated him.
“Well, we have the whole evening ahead of us. Just you and me, Cherry.” His brown face crinkled. He showed her a pair of theater tickets. “Ticket seller swore these were good seats. If they are, you’ve got to let me hold your hand!”
Arriving at the theater, it became clear that the ticket seller had spotted the tall, sunburned flier as an unsuspecting out-of-towner. Cherry’s seat was on one side of a massive pillar, and Wade’s seat was on the other side, a good four feet away.
Sunday, Wade telephoned Cherry and they met at a restaurant near Grand Central Station for lunch. Cherry loved the place Wade chose. “You’re the perfect escort,” she smiled at him.
“We aim to please,” Wade said cheerfully. “What’s all this about a mysterious shut-in and Mrs. Carewe?”
Cherry finished telling him the story, briefly. She was curious about what Louise Carewe might be like, and not a little worried.
By the time they boarded the train for Thornwood, Cherry was so distracted that Wade said:
“Now stop that! You’ve done everything you can, to this point. Worrying won’t make it any better.”
He drew Cherry’s attention to himself, telling her why he did not care much for the auto repair business.
“Too tame. Course, I like engines and speed, but I like ’em in a plane. I’m going back into flying first chance I get. Maybe while I’m here in New York I can line up a pilot’s job. Bill and Terry, two of the fellows I’m staying with, are commercial pilots.”
“Good luck, Wade,” Cherry breathed. “Auto repair does sound too safe and sane for you. Haven’t you been in any breakneck scrapes lately?”
Wade grinned. “Sure. Took up a neighbor’s private plane last week and put on the best exhibition of stunt flying Tucson’s seen in a dog’s age. Then my dad bawled me out for being wild. The neighbor was scared half to death.” Wade chuckled. “He was in the plane, nose diving with me.”
He told her the hair-raising details. By this time the train was pulling into Thornwood. They got off and found themselves in a pretty little town with neat houses and churches. Wade said he would wait here at the station for Cherry.
“This visit won’t take awfully long,” Cherry said.
Wade put her in a taxi. She gave Mrs. Carewe’s address. The taxi took her through the center of town and then along quiet streets lined with modest homes.
They drew up before a salt-box type of house. Cherry paid her fare and stepped out.
Mrs. Carewe was waiting for her at the door. She was a gracious person, still pretty, but weary-looking. She was on crutches and one leg was in bandages. With her was her daughter, a girl of eighteen, also named Louise. She looked startlingly as her mother must have looked at her age. Cherry also met the son, a pleasant boy of about fourteen.
They went into the little living room. Cherry saw a youthful photograph of Mary Gregory on the mantel. The three women sat down together and there was a strained pause. Since Mrs. Carewe seemed rather agitated, Cherry opened the conversation.
“Mrs. Carewe, I have an amazing story to tell you, but a hopeful story,” Cherry began. She outlined all that had happened between Mary Gregory and herself. Then she told what had gone on in the recluse’s house, and in the recluse’s mind, all these years. Mrs. Carewe and her daughter Louise listened in tense silence.
When Cherry finished, Mrs. Carewe’s eyes were wet.
“I’d do anything in the world to help her,” she said earnestly. “I remember Mary Gregory as a beautiful and pathetic young woman. She was so shy and strange. Now you say her hair is gray! Her letters have always been full of other things besides herself all these years, of course…. What can I do?” she begged.
“See her. That is the first step. If she will see you.”
&nbs
p; “But Mary knows I love her. Surely she—”
“It isn’t as simple as that, Mrs. Carewe.” Cherry looked at her. It was a relief to find her, and her daughter, too, kind and understanding people. But could Miss Gregory be persuaded to see her? And even if an interview was managed, it might fail or disastrously drive Mary Gregory still deeper into her shell. Still, it had to be tried, risk or no risk. Then Mrs. Carewe said something that complicated matters.
“The trouble is I can’t travel, nor even leave my house, with this fractured leg. You see, I slipped and fell on an icy walk. I won’t be able to get down to New York for a long while.” She hesitated. “I feel dreadfully sorry not to be able to go—after Mary’s generosity to us!
She has been wonderfully kind. And now, just when she needs me—”
This was a bad disappointment. Cherry looked speculatively at the daughter. Young Louise must be the image of her mother as she was the last time Mary Gregory saw her.
“Could your daughter go?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” both women exclaimed. Young Louise said that she felt she knew and loved the recluse as much as her mother did.
“Miss Ames, when may I go to her house? Soon?” the girl asked.
Cherry reflected. “It might be wiser not to tell her you are coming. Not give her a chance to worry beforehand and build up all sorts of defenses. Let’s say, Miss Carewe, that you’ll go in with me when I make another routine nursing visit.”
They set a date for the coming week. Young Louise looked very thoughtful and troubled. “I may not know what to say,” she confessed. “You’ll have to engineer that meeting, Miss Ames, if Aunt Mary’s whole future depends on it.”
Cherry sighed. “We’ll both do the best we can.”
Driving back to the station, she reflected on how to handle this meeting.
“Whew!” Wade whistled when Cherry told him about her visit. “That’s a fine, explosive problem you have on your hands.”
“Want to take over on the Gregory case?” Cherry teased.
“No! But I’ll tell you what I would like to do.” He grinned, looking like a happy six-year-old. “Ask me what.”
“What?” Cherry asked obligingly.
“Go to the Central Park zoo, when we get back to the city, with you. Go to dinner, with you. Go to the Aviation Show, with you. Spend the rest of the evening dancing, with—”
“I get the idea, Wade, and it sounds wonderful.”
They spent the balance of Sunday doing Wade’s program. Giraffes, man-sized steaks, and planes took Mary Gregory off Cherry’s mind temporarily. Half the fun, as Wade said, was that just the two of them were having this romp. Wade took a tremendous number of taxis, even for two blocks, “because taxis and you are my idea of The Works.”
The evening grew late and later, but Wade and Cherry paid no attention. On Fifty-first Street, the two of them stopped in at a roller-skating rink for a brisk whirl around the huge, wood floor. Eleven o’clock found them dancing dreamily in a great hotel ballroom. At twelve they were perched on stools at a hamburger counter. At one o’clock Cherry and Wade stood on No. 9’s doorstep, tired but happy.
“It was divine,” Cherry said.
“Wasn’t it? But no more doll dressing!”
“You didn’t care for it?” Cherry teased. “A fine assistant you turned out to be.”
“Nevertheless I’m going to remain your assistant all the time I’m here!”
Wade strode off down the moonlit Greenwich Village street, whistling.
CHAPTER XIII
The Test
CHERRY COULD THINK OF NOTHING BUT MARY GREGORY and what was to become of her. The critical hour was at hand, and she must take on the heavy responsibility of Mary Gregory’s encounter with the past—and the future. Even with Wade Cooper in town—even with excited preparation for Christmas and the settlement house party—even though her feet practically tap-danced over her snowbound district, with the season’s approaching gaiety—still, an undercurrent of anxiety gripped Cherry.
A visit to Laurel House on her lunch hour helped dispel that. Evelyn Stanley greeted her with “It’s all coming true! Come here and see for yourself!” That lively young woman seized Cherry’s hand and drew her to the open doors of the craft shops.
Seated around a huge table, which was laden with the Spencer Club and other donors’ dolls, and with piles of colorful remnants, ribbons, laces, doll shoes, little girls were busily sewing doll clothes. The tiny dresses and bonnets were so tastefully designed, so darling, that Cherry regretted she was not several years younger.
The sewing instructor glanced up with a smile. “You visiting nurses may have some of these dolls to distribute to your sick patients. The Girl Scouts will wrap them. The rest of the dolls will go under the Laurel House Christmas tree. How do you like Susie Belle?”
Susie Belle was a southern belle doll, in ruffled crinolines and poke bonnet. There was a bride doll, a farmer-boy doll, a Spanish doll with lace mantilla, and so many others that Evelyn Stanley had to pry Cherry away from that studio.
“Don’t overlook the boys! Doesn’t this look like old Kris Kringle’s workshop?”
Cherry peered into the carpentry workshop. Nearly thirty young boys were hard at work, turning lathes, hammering, gluing, measuring. Under their capable hands, toys were taking shape: kites, precision construction sets, model planes, scooters, wagons, hobby horses and blocks for the very small fry.
“Like this, Philip,” said a man’s singsong voice. “Use your T square, measure so, allow for the joining—”
“Uncle Gustave!” Cherry exclaimed.
Gustave Persson got up stiffly from the workbench, dusted off his hands on his denim apron, and shook hands with Cherry. The little man’s eyes were bluer, and his expression more contented, than Cherry had ever seen them.
“Uncle Gustave consented to become one of our carpentry instructors,” Miss Stanley explained. “He volunteers his services, and he is so good we are only afraid someone will steal him away from Laurel House.”
“I would not go,” Uncle Gustave said stoutly. “I build you the Music School next. In the spring. Soon I make the blueprints.”
“Congratulations to both of you!” said Cherry.
In the next studio, older boys and girls on ladders were building and painting stage scenery. The immense, cardboard slides depicted a beach and ocean, a farm kitchen, and a carnival. There was a great bustle in here, with everyone in overalls or smocks, and smudged with paint—including Cherry’s quiet Miss Culver. Cherry was astonished.
“Why, Miss Culver! I didn’t dare hope you’d be strong again this soon! I’m so glad to see you here.”
Miss Culver sat down demurely on her ladder. “How nice to see you, Miss Ames. Miss Stanley called on me and invited me to the painting class. Then I saw this studio, and they did need extra hands. Isn’t it nice?”
A distinguished, older man appeared at the doorway, unbuttoning his overcoat. He bowed slightly to Miss Culver and greeted Evelyn Stanley.
“Miss Ames,” the social worker said, “this is Mr. Kenneth Long, the painter. Mr. Long gives painting instruction at Laurel House once a week. He is an Academy member and we are very proud to have him.”
The painter acknowledged the introduction and looked at Cherry with special interest. “So you are the nurse who indirectly brought Miss Culver into my class. Come in here, please. You must see her work. I’m quite interested.”
He went off ahead. Evelyn Stanley whispered to Cherry as they followed him:
“I don’t know whether Mr. Long is more interested in Emily Culver’s paintings or in Miss Emily herself.”
“A romance?” Cherry gasped delightedly.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. They are excellent friends. Ssh.”
The painter was waiting for them in the studio. He had stood up against the easels several canvases, still lifes and landscapes. They were simple and naïve in technique, but their color was fresh as a sampler and they wer
e patterned with the exquisite orderliness of Miss Culver herself. Cherry recognized two street scenes, painted from those second-floor windows, one at noon, one at dusk.
“Primitives, of course,” Kenneth Long said, trying to deprecate the pleasure in his voice, “but very nice. Very nice indeed. The entire class has talent, in some degree. Look at these others.”
He spread out more canvases. Each one bespoke the individual who had painted it. Cherry was fascinated.
“Haven’t you enough pictures there to”—she hesitated—“have an exhibition? At the Christmas party?”
Miss Stanley and the artist exchanged glances.
“An excellent idea,” said Kenneth Long. “When can we hang them?”
Miss Culver, standing shyly in the doorway, looked as if she had seen her first rainbow.
In the auditorium was a man with the soberest face Cherry ever saw directing rehearsals of one of the funniest plays Cherry had ever heard.
“That’s Mr. Twiddy,” Evelyn Stanley whispered in her ear. “He wandered in here out of the blue with that sidesplitting play he wrote himself. And I’ve yet to see him crack a smile!”
Miss Stanley told Cherry the play would be produced for the party, and the party would be held a little before Christmas Day itself. Cherry was pleased at that, for she wanted to be home for her birthday and Christmas. “But I wouldn’t miss this party for all the corn in Illinois!”
Then the two young women got down to business about an “Around The World” food table, or food bazaar. Cherry had already invited neighborhood people to cook their kondis and chicken broth with dumplings and pasta and lemon tshay—the well-to-do owner of a local cafeteria promised to supply the food provisions—and to play hosts as well. Everyone had eagerly accepted. But from all of them came insistence on having “American dishes too! We are Americans, Miss Ames! These other things belong to the past. Hot dogs, Miss Ames, and apple pie, and corn bread, please—that’s what we want.”
There was still a great deal to do, and still several days to go until the holiday. Meanwhile people were sick, Christmas or no Christmas, and Cherry had to make her calls. A severely burned hand to dress, a newborn baby whose mother needed instruction, a septic sore throat to irrigate, two cases of pneumonia. And Mary Gregory still to deal with … Wade teased on the telephone to accompany her, but Cherry knew better than to mix personal matters into business. Besides, the rules of the Visiting Nurse Service forbade anyone without official business to enter these homes.