Bubbles and Troubles

By Ruth Moench Bell

(Previous chapter)

Chapter 2

Rhea happened in unexpectedly on the usual scene of turmoil which characterized the Collins home of late years. Hurry! Flurry! Worry! Raised voices, clenched fists, fur flying, characterized Ralph and Ruth. Baffled plans, thwarted ambitions, upset notions characterized the baby. Mrs. Collins, like a distracted mother hen, fluttered between the cook stove, the baby and the battle, always on, between Ralph and Ruth.

“I shall certainly go mad,” the mother often repeated. “When you’ve all killed me off I hope you will be satisfied.”

Marjory, sensitive and over-wrought, alternated between an attempt to comfort her mother and an endeavor to reconcile the twins to each other and a usually successful effort to soothe the baby.

Into this uproar stepped Rhea, trim, elegant, composed. She pitied her aunt’s chagrin and Marjory’s shame. Marjory was thinking to herself even while the greetings were going on. “Even if we are poor, we needn’t be so common.”

“Mother’s going to pack me off with her to the coast again,’‘ Rhea explained when she and Marjory were alone in Marjory’s bed-room. “She tells daddy it’s to give me a chance. But I am just the excuse, so I ran away from the confusion of teas and bridge luncheons, dinner dances and farewell calls and all the rest of the fuss and nonsense.”

“And dropped into greater confusion and less beautiful fuss and nonsense,” Marjory blushed.

Rhea caught her by the hands : “What’s wrong with us, anyhow?” she asked. “Mother’s always chasing bubbles.”

“And my mother is always distracted over troubles,” Marjory added.

“Our home is just Jazz music,” Rhea laughed.

“And ours is Jazz discords,” Marjory supplemented. “Every day is like this. And at night mother is so tired and nervous we all have to rush to bed and then there is more quarreling. Mother does let me sit up till nine now that I am seventeen.”

“Papa sent me up because yours was an ideal home, Mugs, isn’t that a joke? The simple life, homelike and quiet and contented! I could picture your mother all arrayed in violet and lavender, her hair in soft curls and waves, just a touch of powder to take the shine off. Her feet prettily dressed, resting on a foot-stool. I could see your father on the- other side of the table reading his paper and glancing over at her once in a while because she looked so sweet and lovely. You and I at the piano. Ralph and Ruth asleep or playing on the floor. Toddles in bed, of course. It all seemed so inviting to me because we never have anything like that. There is always a rush to be off somewhere.”

“I wanted it, too,” Marjory sighed. “But it never happens. That dream of a boudoir cap suggested it to me. I know ladies only wear them in the mornings or when they are ill. But this one was so pretty and made mamma seem so much younger that I wanted her to dress up for the evening since she hasn’t time before.”

Sunday morning came with its usual uproar getting every one off to Sunday school. Stockings had to be mended. Clothes had to be brushed and sponged. Buttons had to be sewed on. Some articles of apparel were missing and only located after a nerve-racking search. It was just a little more chaotic than the week-day rush.

Papa Collins glanced up from his paper and then finally delivered himself of his longest speech on record.

“My mother had ten,” he observed, “Saturday night all ten of us were bathed in a tub, mind you, no stationary tub attached to a tank of hot water, just a tea kettle, a tub, a boiler and a kitchen fire. We all went into ‘clean under-wear. Each blacked his shoes trying to make them out-shine the others! Each brushed his clothes. I can see it all now. Ten chairs each, with a pair of shining shoes before it, a pair of clean, darned hose and clothes, even to necktie and ribbons suspended over the back of each chair. Sunday morning we all got into our clothes without confusion. Sunday all was peace and quiet. We felt its influence before we were out of bed’. We had a word of prayer before breakfast. When Sunday-school was out we had a short walk. Then all helped with the simple meal. Mother and father had gone with us.”

Marjory tittered: “You must have looked like a small Sunday school of your own, ten of you.”

“Ten would be splendid,” Rhea cried. “Any number rather than to be the only child.”

“It was impressive,” the father continued. “And wonderful to be so favored as to take mother’s or father’s hand and talk over the stories and songs we had sung. After dinner father and mother read their Bible quietly in their own room. We children understood that we could play quiet games. Then we all took a long Sabbath walk and enjoyed the trees and the sky, the clouds, the birds, the brooks and grass and flowers.”

“I suppose I am not the manager your mother was,” Mrs. Collins replied bitterly. “I just can’t get them ready and off, myself and the baby ready in time without being tired out for the day.”

“But you don’t even get to afternoon meeting,” her husband cried.

“I can’t get the dinner over and dress in time. And they have such long sermons at night.”

Mr. Collins turned to his paper. He had made the same observations many times and without avail.

Marjory and Rhea followed Ralph and Ruth to Sunday school. “Do your papa and mamma go to church?” Marjory asked.

“Papa says he is too weary from the business rush of the week to be shut up in church on Sunday. And mamma is too tired from the social whirl. And they don’t like the authorities. I thought our bishop was the finest man on earth but papa and mamma don’t seem to think so. In fact, they say all the leading church men have so many faults.”

“Papa and mamma don’t seem to bother much about the church authorities. They are always ‘having it in’ for the profiteers,” Marjory laughed with the frankness of seventeen. It was really a great joy to unburden themselves so.

A few days , later Rhea cut her visit short and left for home. She got as far as town with Marjory and then a sight met their eyes which they could never forget.

A truck suddenly whizzed past them and drew up before the doctor’s office. A man on the seat beside the driver, held in his arms a flaxen haired little girl whose head hung limply over his shoulder.

Marjory clutched Rhea by the arm, “Ruth,” she gasped: “A motor accident.”

A man hurried upstairs with his apparently lifeless burden. The truck driver jumped out of the car and ran around to the side and picked up from the floor of the car a small boy, also with flaxen hair and limp body.

Rhea felt faint and caught at Marjory for support: “Ralph, too,” she cried. “They left home for some candy not ten minutes ago.” They followed the little forms up stairs.

“It was a motor accident,” they heard the driver explain to the doctors. “They stepped out in the middle of the street, between two cars right in the path of a heavy truck which was backing.”

Rhea and Marjory tried to follow into the operating room. But the door was closed firmly in their faces.

“It is my little brother and sister,” Marjory moaned. “Won’t you find out if they are alive?”

The office girl went out and then presently returned with the word that the little girl was alive and would recover, but the boy’s case was very serious.

Somehow the girls reached home and somehow the word was broken to the father and mother. Then the doctors followed with the two little forms still unconscious.

As if it were some fearful tragedy happening to somebody else, Mrs. Collins looked on with frozen terror. Rhea had expected tears and perhaps hysteria. But her aunt showed only a deadly calm. She neither spoke nor sighed.

“Pray, Aunt Edith! Pray! Pray! We must pray for them!” Rhea clasped her aunt’s tense form and sobbed.

One long shudder ran through the mother at the words: “I can’t,” she cried, and a low sob shook her frame. “I can’t. I haven’t prayed for so long I am ashamed to ask for help. So much to be grateful for and not a word of gratitude, only complaints and bitterness. I can’t ask now.”

“Yes, yes, Auntie ! Heavenly Father is not like that. He is good and kind and forgiving, like daddy. If I neglected for years to tell daddy that I loved him and never thanked him, and then I suddenly crept back for a favor; daddy would give it to me if it cost half his life. Daddy would be glad that I had come back to him at last. We must pray, Auntie.” And Rhea pulled her aunt to her knees beside the bed.

(To be continued)