Brentwood

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Then her own honest, loyal nature came to the front and declared to her that whoever or whatever they were, they were hers, something God had put her into the world with as her own, and nobody, not even themselves, had a right to put them asunder. They were her birthright, and something she must not disown.

  Now and then it came to her that her adoptive mother should have faced this problem with her long ago, when it wouldn’t have hurt her so much, but instantly her love defended the only mother she had ever known, and her heart owned that it would have been very hard for Mrs. Wetherill. On the whole it was just as well that she should decide this thing for herself and act as she chose. And it was generous, of course, of Mrs. Wetherill to give her a free hand to do what she chose for her birth family.

  So her thoughts battled back and forth as she rode along through the strange city, looking out but not seeing the new sights, not taking in a thing but the breathless fact that she was on her way unannounced to meet the people to whom she had been born, and she was frightened.

  It seemed a very long drive, out through a scrubby part of the city and then into a sordid street of little cheap houses all alike, brick houses with wooden porches in an endless row, block after block, with untidy vacant lots across the street, ending in unpleasant ash heaps. It was before the last house in the row that the taxi stopped, on the far outskirts of the city, with a desolate stretch of city dump beyond. Marjorie’s heart almost stopped beating, and she nearly told the driver to turn about and take her back to the hotel. Could it be that her people lived in a house like this? A little two-story, seven-by-nine affair, with not even a pavement in front, just a hard clay path worn by the feet of many children playing?

  The driver handed her her check, opened the door, and she got out her purse.

  “I think perhaps you had better wait for me a minute or two until I make sure this is the right place,” she said hesitantly as she eyed the house with displeasure.

  “Yes ma’am, this is the number you give me,” said the man, “1465 Aster Street.”

  “Yes, but they might have moved, you know,” said Marjorie hopefully.

  So, on feet that were strangely unsteady, she got out and went slowly up the two wooden steps to the door that sadly needed paint. There was no bell, so she knocked timidly, and then again louder when she heard no sound of life within. She was just about to turn away, almost hoping they were gone and she would have no clue to search further, when she heard hurried steps on a bare floor and the door was opened sharply, almost impatiently. Then she found herself face to face with a replica of herself!

  “Does Mrs. John Gay live here?”

  She said the words because she had prepared them on her lips to say, but she was so startled at the apparition of herself in the flesh standing before her that she did not realize she had asked the question. She just stood there and stared and stared at this other girl who was so like and yet so unlike herself.

  The other girl had the same cloud of golden hair, only it was flying in every direction, not smoothly waved in the way it ought to lie; the same brown eyes, only they were full of bitterness and trouble, and a kind of fright in the depths of them; the same delicate lips, only they were set in hard lines as if the grim realities of life had been too close to her. She was wearing a soiled and torn flimsy dress of flowered material that was most unbecoming and a cheap old coat with all the buttons off or hanging by threads. Her hands were small, but they were swollen and red with the cold, and she shivered as she stood grimly there staring at her most unwelcome guest.

  “Well,” she said with a final little shiver, opening the door a trifle wider, “I suppose you must be my twin sister! Will you come in?” Her voice was most ungracious, and she stood aside in the tiny hall to let Marjorie pass in.

  “Oh! Are you—? That is—I didn’t know!” said Marjorie in confusion. Then she turned suddenly to the taxi driver and nodded brightly.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “They still live here!”

  “But they probably won’t for long,” added the other girl grimly.

  “Oh, are you going to move? Then I’m glad I came before you did, for I might have had trouble finding you.”

  “Yes,” said the other girl, unsmiling, “you probably would have.” Then she motioned toward a single wooden chair in the middle of the room. “Won’t you sit down? We still have one chair left, though I believe Ted is going to take it to the pawn shop this afternoon. There isn’t any heat here. Will you take cold?” There was something contemptuous in the tone of this hostile sister. Marjorie gave her a quick, troubled glance.

  “Are you really my sister?”

  “I suppose I must be,” said the other girl listlessly, as if it didn’t in the least matter. “There’s your picture up there on the mantel. Maybe you’ll recognize that. If you had waited till afternoon that would probably have been gone, too.”

  Marjorie turned startled eyes toward the stark little high wooden shelf that ran across the narrow chimney over a wall register and saw her own photographed face in its silver frame smiling at her and looking utterly out of place in that bleak little room. She turned back to look at the other girl wistfully.

  “You know, I didn’t even know I had a sister until day before yesterday!”

  The other looked at her with hard, unbelieving eyes.

  “That’s odd, isn’t it? How did that come about?”

  “No one told me,” she answered sadly.

  “Oh, yes? Then how did you find out?”

  “I found a letter—from Moth—that is, from my adopted mother after she died. She left a letter to tell me about my birth family.”

  “You mean Mr. and Mrs. Wetherill are both dead?” The tone was incredulous.

  “Yes. I am alone in the world now, except for you—my own family.”

  The other girl’s face grew very hard and bitter now.

  “Oh!” she said shortly. “I wondered why you came after all these years, when you haven’t paid the slightest attention to us. Not even a Christmas card now and then! You, with your grand home and your aristocratic parents and your fine education! What could you possibly want with us? But I see it now. They have died and left you penniless, I suppose, after all their grand pretensions, and you have come back on us to live. Well, we’ll take you in, of course. Mother wouldn’t have it otherwise, but I’ll say it’s something like the end of a perfect day to have you turn up just now.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Marjorie, distressed at once. “I ought to have telephoned to see if it was convenient, but I was so eager to find you. And you don’t at all realize anything about it. I’ve not come home to be a burden on you. I thought maybe I could spend Christmas with you. I know how you must feel. You are moving, and frightfully busy, but you’ll let me help, won’t you?”

  “Moving!” sneered her sister. “Yes, we’d be moving right away today if we had any place to move to! And any money to move with! And anything to move! Christmas! I didn’t know there was such a thing anymore!” And suddenly she dropped down in a vacant chair, jerking her hands out from the ragged pockets of her old coat, put them up to her face, and burst into tears, sobbing until her slender body shook with the force of the sobs. Yet it was all done very quietly, as if there was some reason why she must not make a noise.

  Marjorie went close and put her arms about her, her face down against the other’s wet cheek.

  “Oh, my dear!” she said brokenly. “My dear!” And then her own tears were falling, and she held the weeping girl close. “But you are cold! So cold you are trembling! Can’t we go into another room where it is warm and let me tell you how you have misunderstood me? I won’t stay if you don’t want me, but I can’t bear to have you misunderstand me. Come!”

  Then the girl lifted her face and spoke fiercely again.

  “Come?” she said. “Where shall we come? Don’t you know there hasn’t been a teaspoonful of coal in this house for two days and that we’ve burned up all the chairs that aren�
�t sold to try and keep from freezing—except this one that has to be sold to get some medicine for Mother? Don’t you know Father hasn’t had any work for nine months, and Mother is sick upstairs in bed with all the blankets we own piled around her and a hot-water bag at her feet? I borrowed the hot water from a house in the next block, and it won’t stay hot long, I had to bring it so far. She’s getting pneumonia, I’m afraid, and I had to lose my job to stay home and take care of her. Don’t you know that Dad is sick himself, but he had to go out and beg the landlord to let us stay a few days more till Mother is better? And I guess Ted has lost his newspaper route, and I’ve had to take the children to the neighborhood day care to keep them warm and fed?

  “If you stay here with us, you’ll have to pawn that fur coat to get enough to eat! You’d better go back to your fine friends and get a job or something. We haven’t anything in the house to eat but two slices of stale bread I saved to make toast for Mother. She’d likely give them to you if she knew, for she’s cried over you night after night lately. Dad has been eating at the mission for two weeks to save what we had for the rest of us. We pawned everything we had for a pittance to live on. We just finished Mother’s silver wedding spoons, and there isn’t anything left but your picture frame and Mother’s wedding ring, and I can’t bear to go and take that off of her. It would break her heart!”

  Suddenly the sister’s head went down again and more silent sobs shook her. It was terrible to look upon. Marjorie felt it was the most awful sight she had ever seen. She stood there appalled as the bald truths were thrown at her like missiles. And that was her sister sitting there shaking with cold and misery! And she was standing here done up in costly furs, never having known what it was to be cold or hungry or frightened like that! How she despised herself!

  Suddenly she stood back and unbuttoned her coat, slid out of it, and wrapped it warmly around her sister.

  “There! There! You precious sister!” she said softly, laying her lips on the other girl’s cheek.

  But her sister struggled up fiercely, her pride blazing in her eyes, her arms flinging off the coat. “No!” she said. “No, I won’t wear your coat even for a minute.”

  But Marjorie caught it together about her again and held it there.

  “Look here!” she said with authority. “Stop acting this way! I’m your sister, and I’ve come to help you! You can’t fling me off this way! And we haven’t time to fight! We’ve got to get busy. What’s the first thing to do? Make a fire! Where can I find a man to send for coal? Where is your telephone?”

  “Telephone!” laughed the sister hysterically. “We haven’t had a telephone in years!”

  Marjorie gave her a startled look. “Well,” she said suddenly, “we must get a fire going before that hot-water bag gets cold. Mother has got to be thought of first. Where can I find a man to make a fire?”

  “A man!” said the other girl. “A man to make a fire!” And she suddenly gave that wild, hysterical laugh again. “I could make a fire if I had anything to make it with. I tell you, there isn’t even a newspaper left.”

  “Well, where do we get coal? I’ll go out and get some,” said Marjorie meekly.

  “You can’t,” said her sister sullenly. “They won’t trust us till the bill is paid, and we’ve nothing to pay it with.” Her eyes were smoldering like slow fires, and her face was filled with shame as she confessed this, but Marjorie’s eyes lit with joy.

  “Oh, but I have!” she cried eagerly, and put her hand into her purse, pulling out a nice fat roll of bills and slipping them into her sister’s hand.

  “There,” she said. “Go quick and pay the bill and get the coal!”

  The other girl looked down at her hand, saw the large denomination of the bills she was holding, and looked up in wonder. Then her face changed, and an alert look came, pride stole slowly up, and the faint color that had come into her cheeks faded, leaving her ghastly white again.

  “We couldn’t take it!” she said fiercely. “We couldn’t ever pay it back. There’s no use!” And she held it out to Marjorie.

  “Nonsense!” said Marjorie. “You are my family, aren’t you? It’s my mother who is cold, isn’t it?”

  “After all these years? You staying away and never sending us any word? No! You’re adopted and belong to that other woman, and it’s her money, not ours. We can’t take it!”

  “Look here!” said Marjorie, her own eyes flashing now till they resembled her sister’s even more strongly than at first. “I didn’t ask to be adopted, did I? I didn’t have any choice in the matter, did I? I was adopted before I knew what was going on, and I didn’t know anything about you. You have no right to blame me that way! I couldn’t help what was done to me when I was a baby! If she had happened to adopt you, you probably would have been just what I’ve been. But I came to you just as soon as I found out, didn’t I? And I want you to know that I’m here, and I’m going to stay, and I’m going to help just as much as if I’d been here all the time. And as for the money, it’s mine, not hers. She left it to me, and she said in the letter I was to use it in any way I pleased. She even seemed to feel that she would like me to come and find you. But anyway I’m here, and I’m going to stay, and please don’t let’s waste any more time. It is awfully cold here!”

  Then suddenly the other girl jumped up and flung Marjorie’s coat back to her.

  “All right!” she said. “Put on your own coat. Maybe it’s all true. I don’t know. I’ve hated you and the Wetherills so long that I don’t know whether I can ever get over it or not, but I’ve got to try and save my mother’s life, even if it is with that other woman’s money!”

  “But it isn’t her money now! It is mine! And I am going to look after my family. We are going to do it together! Quick! Tell me where to begin. Do I get to see my mother first or had we better have a fire? I guess the fire comes first, doesn’t it? Or you will be sick, too. Tell me where to go, and I’ll have the fixings here in short order.”

  “It’s two blocks down and a block to the right. Brown’s Coal Yard. But there’s a bill for twenty-three dollars. They won’t send any coal till it’s paid. Here! Take back the money!”

  She held out the roll of bills half reluctantly, looking at it with a sort of fierce wistfulness.

  “No,” said Marjorie. “You keep that. I’ve more in my purse. You might have some need for it while I’m gone. But can’t you put something more around you? Your lips are blue with cold!”

  “I’ll be all right! I’m used to it. I really ought to go myself, I suppose. Maybe you won’t be able to find your way. But I hate to leave Mother, if anything should happen.”

  “Of course!” said Marjorie. “And it might startle her too much if I went to her before she knew I had come. Don’t you worry, I’ll find my way. But say, what shall I call you? I can’t exactly go around calling my own sister ‘Miss Gay,’ can I? And you know I never knew your name.”

  The other girl stared.

  “You don’t mean they never told you your own sister’s name? Well, that certainly is funny! I’m Elizabeth. They call me Betty.”

  Her voice was a trifle warmer.

  “That’s a pretty name. Betty Gay! I like it. And—I’m Dorothy—isn’t that it? The letter told me that.”

  “Yes, but they called you Marjorie!” Betty’s voice was suddenly hard again.

  “Well, I couldn’t help that either,” Marjorie said with a grin. “Say, suppose you stop having grudges awhile and tell me if there is anything else I need to get before I come back. When we get the house warm and everything going all right we’ll get out the grudges and settle them up, but we haven’t time for them now, have we?”

  Betty suddenly softened again and almost smiled, and Marjorie saw that her eyes were really lovely when she smiled.

  “I’m sorry!” said Betty. “I guess I’ve been pretty poisonous to you. But maybe if you’d been here and seen the people you love suffer, you’d be poisonous, too.”

  “I’m sure I sh
ould!” said Marjorie, with a sudden quick setting of her lips. “I’m quite sure I would feel just as you feel. And now let’s forget it till we get this place comfortable for you all. What else shall I get besides coal? You said there wasn’t much in the house to eat, didn’t you? Are there other stores down there by the coal yard?”

  “Yes, there’s a couple of grocery stores and a drugstore,” said the girl reluctantly. “But don’t you worry. I’ll get things. You’ve given me all this money.”

  “You’ll have plenty of use for the money, I imagine. I’ll just get whatever I see that I think would be nice and you can get later what I’ve forgotten. Now, go up to Mother and see that she’s all right, and I’ll get back as soon as possible.”

  Marjorie turned and put her hand out to open the door, but before she quite touched it someone fumbled at the knob from the outside. The door was suddenly flung open with a bang, letting in a rush of cold air, and someone stumbled into the hall bearing a heavy burden.

  Chapter 3

  Marjorie stepped back, startled, staring at the tall man carrying a heavy sack of coal upon his back and another of small pieces of wood in his arms.

  Betty rushed forward and put up her arms to take one bag from him.

  “Oh, Father!” she cried, “where have you been? How did you get it?” And then, giving him a quick searching look, “Where is your overcoat, Father? Oh, you didn’t sell your overcoat, did you? Your nice overcoat? Oh, Father, and you are sick!”

  “It couldn’t be helped, Betty,” said the man, in a hoarse voice. “I had to get this house warm somehow for your mother. I couldn’t let her freeze to death!” There was something warm and tender in his voice that brought the tears to Marjorie’s eyes and a great rush of love for her unknown father to her heart.