From the Improvement Era, February 1933 –

The Valentine

By Blanche Stockdale Burr

“I’ve shoveled the snow off your porch and sidewalks, Mis’ Hartly,” Freddie Rankin announced, looking like a disheveled snowman that had been constructed with old clothes for a foundation, as he pounded on Ruth Hartly’s front door.

“Come in, Freddie,” invited Ruth, who had just seated herself at the table and was poking languidly at the food thereon. She was glad of this interruption, for it meant the possibility of company for a dinner she had dreaded to eat alone.

“Nope. Can’t tonight. Got some home work to do.”

“Then I’m out of luck, Freddie. I thought sure you’d have dinner with me. You did a fine job on the walk. Here’s your dollar and a twenty-five cent tip thrown in. And if you want to earn another dollar tomorrow, come over at seven a. m. and run the vacuum sweeper for me.”

“Gee, thanks, Mis’ Hartly. I’ll sure be over at seven in the morning.”

The banging of the door as Freddie left reminded Ruth that she was alone again with her five-thirty dinner on her hands. It was really a delicious meal, but somehow it had lost its savor for her. For one thing, she was no longer satisfied with eating alone. There had been a time when she had thought it the natural thing to do. She had been almost happy to come home exhausted from the office, prepare her own dinner, read for a while to quiet her nerves after her strenuous day of conflict with the business world, jump into a bath-tub filled with warm scented water, and from there slip quickly to bed.

But since her brief months of marriage to Tom she could not entirely content herself with this lonely way of living any more. Though she could scarcely admit it, even to herself, she missed the dark glance of his eyes, the calm depth of his voice, the little courtesies he always showed her at the dinner table.

Of course there had been annoyances connected with her marriage, too. It had been very hard for a successful business woman, well over thirty, as she was, to have a man step into the house where she had reigned supreme, even though he took over the entire responsibility of financing the place. He had brought with him a normal amount of masculine self-assertiveness, and Ruth, capable manager that she was, had clashed with him on every point.

They had had words, for instance, over Tom’s annoying habit of messing up the bathroom she had always kept so spotless, with dirty towels, scattered shaving equipment and cast-off socks. The living-room, since her marriage, had become continually littered with newspapers, articles of men’s clothing and discarded sheets from his typewriter.

Then there was his humiliation at having her work after she was married. Tom, after years of study was expecting to be employed soon by a large firm as corporation lawyer at an enviable salary, but, she had tried to convince him, it was advisable for her to keep on with her work until then. Always he had chafed and fretted over her working, and the fact that some of her fellow workers had made more or less pointed allusions to her about it had added to her dis- content.

Her evenings with Tom, at first so delightful, had gradually become poisoned by little pin-pricks of irritation, brought on for the most part by the strained nerves of two over-worked people, until all their meetings were fraught with subtle antagonisms and bitter hostilities. One night, when Ruth was more tired and irritable than usual, she nagged him all evening for some trifle or other. Tom stood by his guns with true lawyer determination. Bitter words ensued — insult heaped on insult. Ruth had a vague memory of ordering him out of the house.

He had left that night.

Ruth still felt the old spirit of annoyance to think that he had taken her at her word instead of realizing that her rash command was the result of her nerves being on edge after a gruelling day at the office. What she did not remember until it was too late was that he too had been working like a dog and his nerves had probably been in as bad a condition as her own.

She had hoped for a long time that he would realize how things stood and come back to her. But he hadn’t, and she felt as though the bottom had dropped out of her entire existence. There was one thing besides her work that kept her sane when her troubles seemed too heavy for her to bear, and that was the Rankin family next door. There was a father, unemployed, a sickly mother and seven growing children. She often forgot her troubles by helping them with their financial difficulties. It was a great pleasure to give Freddie and his older brothers employment whenever possible so that she could help swell their family income.

Supper over she did the dishes — a weary pastime for her now that she could remember how Tom had looked in her old apron as he had wiped them for her. Then came the long, long evening, fraught with more wistful memories.

It was about nine o’clock when her door-bell rang. She hurried to the porch and looked about to see who had rung, but could find no one. In the street she could hear the sound of an automobile driving quickly away.

Now she noticed for the first time a tiny parcel lying at her feet. As she picked it up and took it into the house she found it to be a cardboard box with her name typewritten on the lid. Opening it she found inside a fragile thing all pink and lavender, adorned with delicate paper lace.

A valentine! To be sure, tonight was February the fourteenth. She had almost forgotten. It had been twenty years since she had received a valentine. Who could have been so silly as to have sent it — to her — a grown woman?

She thought over her list of friends and decided it must have been Tom. He alone of all her acquaintances had enough of the little boy in his makeup to have picked out such a one. She wanted it to be Tom. The longer she thought about it the surer she became that it was Tom. The name must have been typed with his portable typewriter and the car she had heard driving off must have been his little old roadster.

It was amazing how quickly her dejection could turn into ecstacy — the greatest joy she had ever known. Her face glowed and her heart seemed to sing with it. Tom still cared, she told herself over and over. He had met her half way — more than naif way. He had opened up advances by sending the little valentine. It was her turn to take the next step. What should she do?

After a while she stepped to the telephone and called the place where Tom was staying. How good it seemed to hear his voice again.

“Would you care to come and see me?” she asked him.

“Do you really want me to?” His voice betrayed his eagerness.

“Of course.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” he cried.

It was less than half an hour when Ruth saw him enter and felt herself swept into his arms in a warm embrace that blotted out instantly all memory of past bitterness. She was never to forget that evening, the one great turning point of her life, for in it she and Tom agreed to become a peaceable married couple once more.

“I thank you a thousand times for phoning me,” Tom had said just before he left. “If you hadn’t I’d never have had the courage to come.”

They had talked of so many things that Ruth had forgotten to thank him for the valentine, but the next morning she took it from its box and pinned it on the wall so that Tom should see it when he arrived.

Freddie Rankin noticed it when he came to run her vacuum cleaner “I see you got a valentine,” he remarked.

“Yes. Lovely, isn’t it?”

‘Think so?” he asked.

“I surely do.”

“I sent it,” he told her proudly.

“Freddie, you didn’t!” Ruth was filled with dismay.

“I sure did. Mother said I ought to, seeing how nice you’d been to us. I got Dad to type your name so’s you wouldn’t know the writing ‘n he drove me off in his car after I sent it so’s you wouldn’t find me. Do you really like it?”

“Like it, Freddie — Why, 1 think it’s the most blessed little valentine in the whole world!”