THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA
Here were no cool sea breezes in the Meadows. No sand toys, either, and
even if there had been, a big girl, going on eleven, in a house where
there was sickness, had no time to play.
Jacqueline cooked and scrubbed and swept and tended babies, and kept
Neil and Dickie in their places, too.
"You're the bossiest girl," Neil protested with some reason, more than
once. "I wish you'd go back to Chicago where you came from."
"Then you'd get no more cookies," Jacqueline told him. "Aunt Martha
hasn't got time to make 'em for you."
There she had the whip-hand of them all. For if she chose, she could
give a fellow a broken cooky hot from the pan, and if she didn't
choose--My, you should have seen her the day she caught Neil sneaking a
cooky! Smack, smack went her brown little hands, hardened in good
outdoor exercise under the California sun, and schooled (to Aunt Edie's
horror!) in certain boxing tricks by the new Uncle Jimmie. Neil sniffled
with amazement and anger, perhaps, more than with pain. But he didn't
tell tales. They fought out their battles, he and Jacqueline, and on the
whole she gave him more cookies than smacks.
It was no joke, cooking in a hot kitchen, and sleeping in a room, warmed
through with the sun. It was no picnic to be waked, just when the early
morning hours were cool and refreshing, by the gurgling and cooing of
Freddie and Annie, and to face another day of endless step-stepping and
chores that never seemed done. But there were compensations. Suppers,
picnic fashion, to save washing dishes, in the side-yard, or the
orchard, or the knoll by the river, where you could watch the sunset,
while you ate maple-sugar sandwiches and chunks of blueberry cake.
Berrying expeditions to far pastures, with Ralph at the wheel of the
Ford. A Sunday School party in Longmeadow, where Jacqueline felt as if
she were at a masquerade in one of Caroline's faded, scanty ginghams and
a freshly ironed hair-ribbon, but ate her ice-cream (three plates of
it!) and two kinds of cake, as heartily as the uninvited young man in
the limerick.
Of course what made the summer weeks, with their heat and hard work and
meager pleasures, endurable was the fact that Grandma Conway was all the
time getting better. Slowly, oh! very slowly, but surely. Ever since the
day when she found her beloved old green-dragon cup at her lips once
more, she had shown an interest in life, and so she had begun to live
again. She sat up in bed now, and her patient smile was like her old
smile, and her eyes twinkled and understood. You didn't talk with her
long, for fear of tiring her, and the children still played far from the
house, so that she should not be disturbed. But she was the least bit
stronger every day, and she began even to talk of the time when she
could leave her bed.
"Wish we had a wheelchair for her," Aunt Martha confided to Jacqueline
over the peaches that they were preserving, in the cool of the morning.
"But if wishes were horses, beggars might ride."
"They wouldn't want to ride to-day," Jacqueline replied. "They'd all
want Lizzies, at the very least." To herself she made a promise: "I'll
get a wheelchair for Grandma--the best wheelchair in all Boston--just as
soon as Aunt Edie comes."
For Aunt Edie and Uncle Jimmie had promised to come in September. And if
they didn't keep to their plans, well, at any rate Caroline would be
coming back from the beach, and Jacqueline would be released from her
promise, and have her clothes, and her pocket money, and be able to do
things again in her old lordly way. She would do so many things then to
make Grandma and Aunt Martha and the babies happy! She always dwelt upon
their happiness, when she counted the days to September. She took great
pains not to think about Caroline. She had more than a suspicion that
poor Caroline was going to be anything but happy.
Naturally since she was Aunt Martha's right hand and mainstay and
dependence, Jacqueline didn't go often to the village, in those August
days. Once she rode to town with Ralph and Freddie, and at the general
store saw the youngster fitted to a pair of new sneakers, a delicate
task which she and Aunt Martha had agreed was beyond Ralph's masculine
capacity. Again she went to the village with the four young Conways to
the Sunday School party. Then quite unexpectedly came her third
opportunity.
Aunt Martha was going to the north end of the town to see Mr. Asa
Wheelock, who might perhaps lease a portion of her land next season. She
meant to stop on the way and buy a lot of little things that were wanted
at the house--cheesecloth, the coarse kind that you need when you strain
the nice hot fruit juice that cools into jelly, bone buttons for the
children's underwear, five yards of elastic to run into little rompers,
a spool of black sewing silk and one of white cotton, and some boracic
acid and a cake of good white soap for Grandma, and a box of talcum
powder. Ralph never in the world would get them right.
But Aunt Martha's little trip was called off, for Mr. Asa Wheelock
thoughtfully telephoned that he had to drive south that afternoon, so
he'd stop in as he passed the Conway farm.
"That'll save just so much gas," Aunt Martha said in a pleased voice.
You know the price of a gallon of gasoline is worth considering, when
there is a long illness in a house where the income is nonelastic. "But
I did want that cheesecloth right away."
"Let me go and get it," volunteered Jacqueline, eager for adventure.
"Like as not I can beg a ride, and if I can't, why, I don't mind the
walk one little bit."
Dickie was eager to go, too. The public library would be open that
afternoon, and he wanted to return the Boy Scout book that he had
finished, and get out another. In the end Aunt Martha consented, and off
the two children started, as soon as the dinner dishes were cleared
away. They had not walked half a mile, when they were overtaken by a
friendly Polish neighbor, and perched hazardously on his running board,
they reached the village Post Office while the afternoon was still
young.
Dickie vanished into the public library, not to be seen again till
closing time, and Jacqueline went about her errands. She bought the
boracic and soap and talc at Cyrus Hatton's general store, and the
cheesecloth at the Post Office, but for the buttons and elastic and
thread she went into Miss Crevey's shop. She had had no call to go there
since the day when she pledged Caroline's gold beads for the precious
dragon cup that had been such a life-bringer to Grandma. She darted a
glance at the dusty secretary in the corner, and remembered how she had
watched Miss Crevey lock up the beads in one of its drawers.
"Five yards of elastic," chanted Miss Crevey, as she measured off the
commodity. "I'm all out o' white, but black's just as good, for it won't
show anyhow. Can't give you bone buttons that size, but these smaller
ones'll slip into the button-holes ever so much easier, and I won't
charge you no more. Black silk? I'll have some in next week, maybe. But
there's plenty of thirty cotton. Hadn't you better take two spools as
long as I have it?"
Jacqueline thought not.
"Well, there's no suitin' some folks," muttered Miss Crevey as she
bundled up the small wares. "By the way," she made a sudden pounce, and
Jacqueline suspected that she had been making ready to pounce ever since
she saw her enter the shop, "have you brought along the five dollars
that you owe me for that old cup?"
"Brought the five dollars?" Jacqueline echoed blankly. Then she
recovered from her amazement. "Why, no," she said sturdily. "I said I'd
have the money in September, and you said all right, and it isn't
September yet."
"I've got some bills to meet," said Miss Crevey, in a resentful voice.
"I need the cash right now."
"But I haven't got it," Jacqueline repeated. "I told you it would be
September, and that suited you all right, when you took the beads."
"The beads ain't no good to me," said Miss Crevey. Her sallow cheeks
were reddened, and she spoke very fast. "Cash is what I want, and what I
must have." She hesitated the merest second. "I've got a chance to sell
them beads," she launched a thunderbolt.
Jacqueline stared at her. For a moment she could do nothing but stare.
"But you can't sell those beads," she said in a scared whisper.
"Now look here," Miss Crevey spoke on, in her rapid, nervous voice. "I
wouldn't deceive you. I'll tell you just how 'tis. Mrs. Enos Trowbridge
was in here day before yesterday, and her cousin was with her. They was
looking at some old things I got laying round, and they spied them beads
tucked away in the secretary. That cousin's just set on having 'em.
Seems they're the identical same as some old ones of her mother's she
lost in a fire."
"But she can't have those beads!" Jacqueline cried in a panic. "I won't
have it! Don't you let her!"
"I wouldn't cheat you," Miss Crevey repeated shrilly. "She'll give me
six dollars for 'em. I'll keep the five you owe me, and you shall have
the dollar for yourself."
Her face was like flame as she snapped out the words. Those bills that
she must meet, the wretched, driven, little old woman that she was! She
must think only of those bills. She mustn't admit even to herself that
she was cheating a child. For Mrs. Enos Trowbridge's cousin had offered
her twenty-five dollars for those quaint old beads.
"You can get yourself a whole lot of candy for a dollar," wheedled Miss
Crevey.
"No, I can't," said Jacqueline bluntly. "I couldn't get more than half a
pound of decent candy. And I don't want candy, and I don't want your old
dollar. I won't have those beads sold. I never said you could sell them.
I won't let you."
"Oh, you won't, hey?" sneered Miss Crevey. "How are you going to stop
me, Miss?"
"I'll tell Aunt Martha," said Jacqueline superbly. "And I'll tell the
constable, maybe. You made me a promise, and you've got no right to
break it. You can't sell those beads."
Miss Crevey's flushed face was white, like the white of a tallow candle.
Jacqueline would never know in all her days how that allusion to the
constable had struck terror to the very soul of the guilty, worried
little old woman.
But Miss Crevey recovered herself quickly.
"I guess," she sniffed, "I've wasted 'bout all the time I mean to waste
on a thankless, sassy young one. You can just take your cheap brass
beads off my hands. I won't have 'em cluttering up my shop."
"All right," said Jacqueline indignantly. "I'll be glad to take 'em."
Miss Crevey leaned across the counter and spoke with a smile that parted
her thin lips above her false teeth.
"And you can bring me back my cup," she said.
For a second the shop went spinning round Jacqueline. How was it, she
asked herself, that people felt before they fainted dead away? At a
great distance, as it seemed to her, she heard her own voice speaking:
"I--can't. Don't you _see_? Not that cup! Why, it would _kill_ Grandma."
"Likely," sneered Miss Crevey. She turned her back elaborately and began
to rearrange the articles on her untidy shelves.
Jacqueline clutched at the edge of the counter. She really felt as if
she were going to fall.
"You didn't--mean that?" she implored.
Miss Crevey wheeled about and faced her.
"Mean it?" she cried. "Why shouldn't I mean it? What good are them beads
doing me now? You bring me back that good cup I let ye take, or you let
me sell them beads for what's offered me, or you bring me the five
dollars, like you promised me. I don't care which ye do, but you got to
do one or t'other and do it quick."
There were footfalls on the worn step outside the screen door, and the
sound of women's chattering voices. No time to talk further, and no use
in talking!
"You make up your mind before to-morrow night," bade Miss Crevey in a
fierce whisper, "and don't ye go bawling and crying in here!"
Fiercely Jacqueline blinked back the tears that had gathered in her
eyes. Proudly she turned her back on Miss Crevey, and walked past the
chattering customers, out into the street.
What was she going to do, she asked herself over and over again, as she
headed blindly homeward? Take away Grandma's cup? Ten thousand times,
_no_! Let Caroline's beads be sold? Why, that was to make herself a
thief! Caroline's precious beads that she had kept hidden away with her
mother's picture--Caroline's mother's beads--to let them be sold would
be almost as dreadful as to take Grandma's cup! And the only way to save
the cup and the beads from the ogreish Miss Crevey was to find five
dollars, somewhere, somehow before to-morrow night.
There was no time to write to Judge Blair for the money, even if
Jacqueline had been willing at last, in her desperate need, to betray
the secret that was one-half Caroline's. There was no hope of reaching
Caroline. Jacqueline could go to Aunt Martha, but Aunt Martha hadn't any
five dollars to spend even for cups, and Aunt Martha, with all her cares
and troubles, mustn't be worried. Only in the last extremity could she
turn to Aunt Martha. Only to-morrow night, when every hope was surely
gone.
But before to-morrow night, somehow, she herself must find the way out.
How, she wondered desperately, how? And while she wondered, she had
walked southward, like one in a daze, down Longmeadow Street, and now,
when she came to herself, she realized that she was at the very gate of
The Chimnies. She paused and looked through the iron grill work, and
then, as if in answer to her un-worded prayer for help, she saw that the
shutters were open, and the windows flung wide, and life at last, and
hope for her, had come into the silent house again.