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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
In "Not Under the Law," Grace Livingston Hill weaves a poignant narrative that explores themes of faith, love, and the divine grace that transcends societal constraints. Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century America, Hill's writing exhibits a distinct blend of romanticism and spiritual conviction, reflecting her belief in the redemptive power of love and the importance of personal salvation. The novel features relatable characters grappling with moral dilemmas, effectively illustrating the clash between personal desires and societal expectations, all while maintaining a lyrical yet accessible literary style that draws the reader into its earnest explorations of faith. Grace Livingston Hill, often referred to as the 'ÄòQueen of Christian Romance,'Äô penned this novel as part of her larger oeuvre that emphasizes the Christian principles of love and redemption. Growing up in a devout household, Hill was influenced by the evangelical fervor of her time, which shaped her worldview and inspired her prolific writing career. Her own experiences of love and loss, coupled with a strong moral compass, inform the characters and stories she crafts, giving readers both relatable and aspirational figures. "Not Under the Law" is highly recommended for readers seeking an uplifting tale of faith intertwined with romance. Hill'Äôs ability to depict the transformative effect of divine love serves as a touching reminder of the grace that governs our lives. This classic work stands as a testament to Hill'Äôs enduring legacy in Christian literature, inviting both reflection and inspiration for contemporary audiences.
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Not Under the Law
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
The kitchen door stood open wide, and the breath from the meadow blew freshly across Joyce Radway’s hot cheeks and forehead as she passed hurriedly back and forth from the kitchen stove to the diningroom table preparing the evening meal.
It had been a long, hard day and she was very tired. The tears seemed to have been scorching her eyelids since early morning, and because her spirit would not let them out they seemed to have been flowing back into her heart till its beating was almost stopped by the deluge. Somehow it had been the hardest day in all the two weeks since her aunt died; the culmination of all the hard times since Aunt Mary had been taken sick and her son Eugene Massey brought his wife and two children home to live.
To begin with, at the breakfast table Eugene had snarled at Joyce for keeping her light burning so long the night before. He told her he couldn’t afford to pay electric bills for her to sit up and read novels. This was most unjust since he knew that Joyce never had any novels to read, but that she was studying for an examination which would finish her last year of normal school work and fit her for a teacher. But then her cousin was seldom just. He took especial delight in tormenting her. Sometimes it seemed incredible that he could possibly be Aunt Mary’s son, he was so utterly unlike her in every way. But he resembled markedly the framed picture of his father Hiram Massey, which hung in the parlor, whom Joyce could but dimly remember as an uncle who never smiled at her.
She had controlled the tears then that sprang to her eyes and tried to answer in a steady voice:
“I’m sorry, Gene, I was studying, I wasn’t reading a novel. You know last night was the last chance I had to study. The examination is today. Maybe when I get a school I’ll be able to pay those electric light bills and some other things too.”
“Bosh!” said Eugene discourteously, “You’ll pay them a big lot, won’t you? That’s all poppy-cock, your trying to get a school, after a whole year out of school yourself. Much chance you’ll stand! And you may as well understand right now that I’m not going to undertake the expense of you lying around here idling and pretending to go to school for another whole year, so you better begin to make other plans.”
Joyce swallowed hard and tried to smile:
“Well,” she said pleasantly, “Wait till after the examinations. I may pass and then there won’t be any more trouble about it. The mathematics test is this morning. If I pass that I’m not in the least afraid of the rest. It is all clear sailing.”
“What’s that?” broke in Nannette’s voice sharply, “Are you expecting to go off this morning? Because if you are you’ve missed your calculation. I have an appointment with the dressmaker in town this morning and I don’t intend to miss it. She’s promised to get my new dress done by the day after tomorrow, and you’ll have to stay home and see that the children get their lunch and get back to school. Besides, it’s time the cellar was cleaned and you’d better get right at it. I thought I heard a rat down there last night.”
Joyce looked up aghast:
“But Nan! You’ve known all along I must go to the school house this morning early!”
“You needn’t ‘but-Nan’ me, young lady, you’re not in a position to say ‘must’ to any one in this house. If mother chose to let you act the independent lady that was her affair, but she’s not here now, and you’re a dependent. It’s time you realized that. I say I’m going to town this morning, and you’ll have to stay at home.”
Nannette had sailed off upstairs with the parting words and Eugene went on reading his paper as if he had not heard the altercation. For a moment Joyce contemplated an appeal to him but one glance at the forbidding eyebrows over the top of the morning paper made her change her mind. There was little hope to be had from an appeal to him. He had never liked her and she had never liked him. It dated back to the time when she caught him deceiving his mother and he dared her to tell on him. She had not told, it had not seemed a matter that made it necessary, but he hated her for knowing he was not all that his mother thought him. Besides, he was much older than she, and had a bullying nature. Her clear, young eyes annoyed him. She represented conscience in the concrete, his personal part of which he had long ago throttled. He did not like to be reminded of conscience, and too, he had always been jealous of his mother’s love for Joyce.
Joyce glanced with troubled eyes at the clock.
She was due at the school house at nine-thirty. Gene would take the eight-nineteen train to town, and Nan would likely go with him. There would be time after they left to put up a lunch for the children if she hurried. Nan didn’t like them to take their lunch, but Nan would have to stand it this time, for she meant to take that examination. She shut her lips tightly and began to remove the breakfast things from the table swiftly and quietly, leaving a plate for Junior who would be sure to be down late.
Her mind was stinging with the insults that had been flung at her. She had always known that she and her cousins were not compatible but such open words of affront had never been given her before, although the last few days since the funeral there had been glances and tones of contempt that hurt her. She had tried to be patient, hoping soon to be in a position where she would not longer be dependent upon her relatives.
There was some wrangling between Junior and his sister before Nan and Gene left for the train, and Joyce had been obliged to leave her work to settle the dispute; and again after they were gone she had to stop spreading the bread for the lunches and hunt for Junior’s cap and Dorothea’s arithmetic. It was a breathless time at the end, getting the lunches packed and the children off to school. She met with no opposition from them about taking their lunches for they loved to do it, but they insisted on two slices apiece of jelly roll which so reduced the amount left in the cake box that Joyce added “jelly roll” to the numerous things she must do when she got back from her examination.
But at last she saw them run off together down the street and she was free to rush to her room, smooth her hair, and slip into her dark blue serge. It remained to be seen how much time there would be left for the cellar when she got home. But whatever came she must get those examinations done.
When she was half way downstairs she ran back and picked up a few little treasured trinkets from her upper bureau drawer sweeping them into her bag, some things that Aunt Mary had given her, a bit of real lace, some Christmas handkerchiefs, one or two pieces of jewelry, things that she prized and did not want handled over. Both Dorothea and her mother seemed to consider they had a perfect right to rummage in her bureau drawers and the day before Joyce had come upon Nan just emerging from her clothespress door as if she had been looking things over there.
It was not that the girl had anything of much value, but there were a few little things that seemed sacred to her because of their association, and she could not bear to have them handled over contemptuously by her cousin. Nan might return sooner than she expected and would be sure to come to her room to look for her. It would only anger her if she found the door locked, and anyhow the spare room key fitted her lock also. There was no privacy to be had in the house since Aunt Mary’s death.
Joyce closed and locked the house carefully, placing the key in its usual place of hiding at the top of the porch pillar under the honeysuckle vine, and hurried down the street toward the school building. She registered a deep hope that she might get home in time to do a good deal of work in the cellar before Nan arrived but she meant to try to forget cellar and Nan and everything till her examinations were over.
At the school house she found to her dismay that the schedule had been changed and that three of her tests came successively that day. There would be no chance of getting through before half past three, perhaps later. Nan would be angry, but it could not be helped for this once. She would try and forget her until she was through and then hurry home. She resolved not to answer back nor get angry that night if anything mean was said to her, and perhaps things would calm down. So she put her mind on logarithms, Latin conjugations and English poetry. These examinations offered the only way she knew to independence and it must be taken.
Late in the afternoon she hurried home, tired, faint, worried lest she had not answered some of the questions aright, palpitating with anxiety lest Nan had preceded her, or the children were running riot.
Breathlessly she came in sight of the house, and saw the front door open wide and the doctor’s car standing in the drive. She ran up the steps in fright and apprehension.
Nan was very much home indeed, and was furious! She met Joyce in the hall and greeted her with a tirade. Junior had been hurt playing baseball and had been brought home with a bandaged head and arm, weeping loudly.
Dorothea lolled on the stairs blandly eating the remainder of the jelly roll and eyeing her cousin with contempt and wicked exultation. She had already lighted the fuse by saying that she and Junior hadn’t wanted to take their lunch, but Cousin Joyce had insisted, and had given them all the jelly roll. The light in her mother’s eye had been such as to make Dorothea linger near at the right time. Dorothea loved being on the virtuous outside of a fight. If one showed signs of dying she knew how to ask the right question or say the innocent word to revive it once more. Dorothea contemplated Joyce now with deep satisfaction.
The doctor’s car was scarcely out of the gate and down the road before the storm broke once more upon Joyce’s tired head.
Joyce did not wait to go upstairs to her room and change her dress. She took off her hat on the way to the kitchen and put it and her bag and books and papers on the little bench outside the kitchen door where no one would be likely to notice them. She enveloped herself in a big kitchen apron and went to work, preparing the vegetables for dinner and getting out materials for jelly roll. Then Nan entered, blue blazes in her eye.
Nan had not taken off her hat yet and around her neck she was wearing Joyce’s pretty gray fox neckpiece, Aunt Mary’s last Christmas gift, which Joyce had supposed was safely put away in camphor on her closet shelf. Joyce had not noticed it in the darkness of the hall, but now the indignity struck her in the face like a blow as Nan stood out in the open doorway smartly gowned and powdered and rouged just a bit, her face angry and haughty, her air imperious:
“You ungrateful, wicked girl!” broke forth Nan. “You might just as well have been a murderer! Suppose Junior had been brought home dying and no one to open the house?”
“I’m sorry, Nan,” began Joyce, “I did not expect to be gone so long. I was told there would be only one examination today.”
“Examinations! Don’t talk to me about examinations! That’s all you care about! It’s nothing to you that the little child who has lived under the same roof with you for three years is seriously hurt. It’s nothing to you even if he had been killed. And he might have been killed, easily! Yes, he might, you wicked girl! It was at noon he was playing ball when he got hit, and you knew I didn’t want him to stay at school at noontime just for that reason. The bad boys tried to hurt him,” so she raved on, “It was your fault. Entirely your fault!”
There was absolutely no use in trying to say anything in reply. Nannette would not let her. Whenever she opened her lips to say she was sorry her cousin screamed the louder, till Joyce finally closed her lips and went about her work with white, set face, wishing somehow she might get away from this awful earth for a little while, wondering what would be the outcome of all this when Gene got home. Gene was not very careful himself about Junior. He spoiled him horribly, but he was very keen about defending him always. As she went about her kitchen work she tried to think what she could say or do that would still the tempest. It seemed to her that her heart was bursting with the trouble. Maybe she ought to have given up the examination after all. Maybe she should have stayed at home. But that would have meant everlasting dependence upon those to whom she was not closely bound. And Junior had already recovered sufficiently to be out in his bandages swinging on the gate. He could not be seriously injured. Oh, why could she not have died instead of Aunt Mary! Why did people have to bring children into the world and then leave them to fend for themselves where they were not wanted? What was life all for anyway?
Dorothea hovered around like a hissing wasp, filching the apples as they were peeled and quartered for the apple sauce, sticking a much soiled finger into the cake batter, licking it, and applying it again to the batter several times, in spite of Joyce’s protests. She seemed to know that her mother would not reprove her for anything she did to annoy Joyce tonight.
Gene came in while Joyce was taking up the dinner, and Joyce could hear his wife telling in a high suppressed key all the wrongs of the day, with her own garbled account of Junior’s accident and Joyce’s disregard of orders. So the tears stung into her eyes and her hot cheeks flushed warmer and the only thing in the world that gave her any comfort was the sweet spring breath from the meadow coming in the kitchen door as she passed and repassed, carrying dishes of potatoes and cabbage and fried pork chops. Their mingled hot odors smothered her as they steamed up into her face, and then would come that sweet, cool breeze, blowing them aside, laying a cool hand on her wet brow like the hand of a gentle mother. How she longed to fly away into the coolness and sweetness and leave it all behind. How many times during the last two hard weeks had she looked out that kitchen door across the meadows and longed to be walking across them into the world away from it all forever.
Gene came into the diningroom just as she set the hot coffee-pot down on the table, and he looked at her with his cold blue eyes, a look that was like a long, thin blade of steel piercing to her very soul. She thought she had never before seen such a look of contempt and hate. She felt as if it were something tangible that he had inserted into her soul which she would never be able to get out again.
“Well, you’re a pretty one, aren’t you? Mother was always boasting about how dependable you were, I wonder what she would think of you now! I always knew you had it in you. You’re just like your contemptible father! Get an idea in your head and have to carry it out. Bull-headed. That’s what you are. That’s what he was. I remember hearing all about it. He wanted to study up some germ and make himself famous. Had to go and get into some awful disease, subject himself to danger, and finally got the disease and died. Pretended he was doing a great thing for humanity at large, but left his wife and child for her poor sister to support and saddled us all with a girl just like him to house and feed and clothe. Now, young lady, I want you to understand from this time forth that we’re done with nonsense and whether you pass or whether you don’t pass, your place is right here in this house doing the work and taking the orders from my wife! I’ve got you to look after and I’ll do it, but I don’t intend to stand any more of your monkey-shines. Do you hear? I won’t have anybody in my house that doesn’t obey me!”
Joyce looked at him in a kind of tired wonder. She knew there were things being said that were dissecting her very soul, and that by and by when she moved she would bleed, perhaps her soul might bleed to death with the sharpness of it all, but just now she had not the strength to resent, to say anything to refute the awful half-truths he was speaking, to shout out as she felt she ought, that he had no right to speak that way about her dear, dead father whom she had not known much, could scarcely remember, but had been taught by both mother and aunt to love dearly. She could only stand and stare at him as he talked. She was growing white to the lips. Her knees were shaking under her, and the children stared at her curiously, even Nannette eyed her strangely. She was summoning all her strength for an effort:
“Cousin Eugene,” she said clearly as if she were talking to some one away off, and her voice steadied as she went on. “You know I don’t have to stay here if you feel this way. I will go!”
And then, like a bird that suddenly sees an opening in its cage and sets its wings swiftly, she turned and walked out of the room, across the kitchen, and out the kitchen door into the evening sunlight and the sweet meadow breath.
On the bench beside the door lay her hat covering her little worn handbag and books and papers. She swept them all up as she passed, and held them in front of her as she walked steadily on down the pebbled path among the new grass toward the garage, the blinding tears now coming and blurring every thing before her.
“Let her alone!” she heard Gene sneer loudly, “She’ll go out to the garage and boo-hoo awhile and then she’ll come back and behave herself. Dishes? I should say not! Don’t you do a dish! Let her do ’em when she gets over her fit. It’ll do her good. She’ll be of some use to you after this.”
Joyce swept away the tears with a quick hand and lifted her head. Why should she weep when she was walking away from this? She had wanted to go, had wondered and wished for an opening, and now it had come, why be sad? She was walking away into the beauty of the sunset. Smell the air! She drew a deep breath and went straight on past the garage, down through the garden to the fence, and stooping slipped between the bars and into the meadow.
There were violets blooming among the grass here, blue as the sky, and nodding to her, dazzling in their blueness. There was a dandelion. How bright its gold! The world was before her. The examination was not over. But what of that? She could not go back to take her diploma anyway, but she was free, and God would take care of her somewhere, somehow.
A sense of buoyancy bore her up. Her feet touched the grass of the meadow as if it had been full of springs. She lost the consciousness of her great weariness. Her soul had found wings. She was walking into a crimson path of the sunset, and April was in her lungs. How good to be away from the smell of pork chops and hot cabbage, the steam of potatoes and Gene Massey’s voice. Never, never would she go back. Not for all the things she had left behind. They were few. She was glad she had her few little trinkets. They were all that mattered anyway. Except the fur neckpiece. It went hard to lose that. The last thing Aunt Mary bought her. Of course it would have been wiser to wait to pack. There were her two good gingham dresses, and two others that were faded, but she would need things to work in, and there was the little pink Georgette that Aunt Mary bought her last summer! She hated to lose that. But Aunt Mary, if she could see would quite understand, and if she could not see it could all be explained in heaven some day. There would be no use sending to Nannette or Gene for anything. They would never send her a rag that belonged to her. There would be inconveniences of course, her hair-brush, her tooth brush—but what were they?
And then, quite suddenly as she climbed the fence, and stood in a long, white road winding away over a hill, the sun which had been slipping, slipping down lower and lower, went out of sight and left only a ruby light behind, and all about the world looked gray. The sweet smells were there, and the wonderful cool air to touch her brow lightly like that hand of her mother so long ago, just as it touched and called her in the kitchen a few minutes before, but the bright world was growing quiet at the approaching night, and suddenly Joyce began to wonder where she was going.
Automobiles were coming and going hurriedly as if the people in them were going home to dinner, and they smiled and talked joyously as they passed her, and looked at her casually, a girl walking alone in the twilight with her hat in her hand.
Joyce came to herself and put on her hat, she put her papers together in a book, and the books under her arm, and slipped the strap of her handbag over her wrist. She went on walking down the road toward the pink and gold of the sunset and wondered where she was going, and then, as she lifted her eyes she saw a star slip faintly out in the clear space between the ruby and rose, as if to remind her that One above was watching and had not forgotten her.
CHAPTER II
Back in the kitchen she had left silence reigned, and all the pans and kettles and bowls which had been used in preparing the hurried evening meal seemed to fill the place with desolation. It was not a room that Nannette cared to contemplate as she came out to get the coffee-pot for Eugene’s second cup which he insisted be kept hot. She frowned at the jelly roll all powdered with sugar and lying neatly on a small platter awaiting dessert time. It was incredible that Joyce had managed to make it in so short a time with all the rest she had to do, but she needn’t think she could make up for negligence and disobedience by her smartness.
“Gene, I think you better go down to the garage and talk to her,” said Nannette coming back with coffee, “The kitchen’s in an awful mess and she ought to get at it at once. I certainly don’t feel like doing her work for her when I’ve been in the city all day, and then this shock about Junior on top of it all.”
“Let her good and alone,” said Gene sourly, “She’s nothing to kick about. If I go out there and pet her up she’ll expect it every time. That’s the way mother spoiled her, let her do every thing she took a notion to, and she has to learn at the start that things are different. What made her mad anyhow? She’s never had a habit of flying up. I didn’t think she had the nerve to walk off like that, she’s always been so meek and self-righteous.”
“Well, I suppose she didn’t like it because I wore that precious fox scarf of hers to the city. She’s terribly afraid her things will get hurt, and she pretends to think a lot of it because mother gave it to her last Christmas.”
“Did you wear her fur?”
“Why, certainly. Why shouldn’t I? It’s no kind of a thing for a young girl like her to have, especially in her position. She ought to be glad she has something I can use that will make up for what we do for her.”
“Better let her things alone, Nan. It might make trouble for us if she gets up the nerve to fight. You can’t tell how mother left things you know, till Judge Peterson gets well and we hear the will read.”
“What do you mean? Didn’t your mother leave everything to you, I should like to know?”
“Well, I can’t be sure about it yet. I suppose she did, but it’s just as well to know where we stand exactly before we make any offensive moves. You know mother said something that last night about Joyce always having a right to stay here, that it was her home. I didn’t think much of it at the time of course, and told her we would consider it our duty to look out for Joyce till she got married of course, but I’ve been thinking since, you can’t just tell, mother might have been trying to prepare me for some surprise the will is going to spring on us. You know mother had an overdeveloped conscience, and there was something about a trifling sum of money that Joyce’s father left that mother put into this house to make a small payment I think. I can’t just remember what it was but that would be just enough to make mother think she ought to give everything she owned to Joyce. I sha’n’t be surprised at almost anything after the way she made a fool of that girl. But anyhow, you let her alone till she gets good and ready to come in. She won’t dare stay out all night.”
“She might go to the neighbors and make a lot of talk about us,” suggested Nan, “She knows she’d have us in a hole if she did that.”
“She wouldn’t go to the neighbors, not if I know her at all. She wouldn’t think it was right. She has that kind of a conscience too. It’s lucky for us.”
“Well, suppose she doesn’t come in and wash the dishes tonight?”
“Let ’em go then till tomorrow. You’ve got dishes enough for breakfast haven’t you? Well, just leave everything where it is. Don’t even clear off the table. Just let her see that she’ll have it all to do when she gets over her tantrums, and you won’t find her cutting up again very soon.”
“I suppose she’ll have to come back tonight,” speculated Nan. “She has another examination tomorrow morning I think, and it would take an earthquake or something like that to keep her away from that.”
“Well, we’ll order an earthquake then. I don’t mean to have her finish that examination. If she happens to pass—and she likely would for those Radways have brains they say, that’s the trouble with them—she’ll make us all kinds of trouble wanting to teach instead of doing the work for you, and then we’d be up against it right away. It costs like the dickens to get a servant these days and there’s no sense in having an outsider around stealing your food and wearing your clothes. Don’t you worry about Joyce. Let her alone till she comes in. Lock the kitchen door so she’ll have to knock. Then I’ll let her in and give her such a dressing down as she’ll remember for a few years. Come on. Let’s turn out this diningroom light and go into the living room. Then she’ll know we’re not going to wash those dishes, and she’ll come in all the sooner.”
Nannette slapped Dorothea for breaking off another piece from the jelly roll, and turned out the light quickly. It occurred to her that there would be nobody to make another jelly roll when this one was gone unless Joyce came speedily back. She hated cooking.
But although she intentionally neglected to lock the kitchen door, hoping the girl would slip in quietly when they were gone from the diningroom and get the work done, Joyce did not return. Dorothea and Junior were allowed to sit up far beyond their usual bedtime, and after they were at last quiet upstairs, Eugene and Nannette continued to sit and read, loth to leave until their young victim should return repentant and they could tell her just what they thought of her for her base ingratitude. When you know you have done wrong yourself there is nothing so soothing as to be able to scold some one else.
When Nannette finally went upstairs to bed she took the borrowed fox fur and flung it across Joyce’s bed, with its tail dragging on the floor.
“I’m sure I don’t know why we can’t have that will read without waiting for that old mummy to get well,” she said discontentedly. “It’s awfully awkward waiting this way and not knowing what is ours. Why can’t some one else read it if Judge Peterson isn’t able to?”
“Why, no one knows just where it is. His valuable papers are all locked in his safe, and the doctor won’t let him be asked a thing about business till he gets able to be around. He says it might throw him all back to have to think about anything now. Of course it’s all nonsense, but I don’t see what we can do.”
“Suppose he should die?”
“Why, then of course, they would open his safe and examine all his papers, but his wife won’t hear to anything being touched till he gets out of danger, so we just have to wait.”
“Well, I’m not going to worry about it,” said Nannette with a toss of her head. “If the will isn’t right we’ll just break it, that’s all. I’m not going to let that girl get in the way of my happiness. There’s more than one way of going about things, and, as you say, she has that kind of a conscience. If that’s her weak point we’ll work her through that. If she thinks her beloved Aunt Mary is going to be proved in court as not of sound mind, she’ll give up the hair on her head. I know her. Smug-faced little fanatic! How on earth did she ever get wished on your mother for life anyway? You’ve never told me.”
“Oh, her mother was mother’s youngest sister, and idol. Mother was perfectly insane about her. Then she married this Radway, and everybody said it was a great match, brilliant young doctor and all that. But the brilliant young doctor showed he hadn’t a grain of sense in his head. He discovered some new germ or other and then he went to work experimenting on it, and two or three times was saved from death just by the skin of his teeth. Finally he let them inoculate him with the thing, just to observe its workings. He knew he was running a great risk when he did it, and yet he was ass enough to go ahead. When he died they sold the house and a good deal of the furnishings. Mother had some of the things up in the attic a long time. I don’t know what became of them. Sold I suppose, perhaps to get that fox fur. Mother was just daffy on that girl. She always wanted a daughter you know. And after Aunt Helen died,—she didn’t live many months after her husband, just faded away you know—why mother did everything for Joyce.”
“Well, I think she did more than she had any right to do for just a niece,” said Nannette scornfully. “It’s time you had your innings. I think your mother should have thought of her own son and her grandchildren, and not lavished fox furs on a mere relation. She just spoiled Joyce. She thinks she has to live in luxury, and it’s going to be very hard to break her in to working for her living.”
The clock was striking twelve before Nannette began to undress, and now and then she would cast an anxious eye out of the window and wonder how long the erring girl’s nerve would hold out, or whether she had really dared go to some neighbor’s and stay all night. If she had what could they do?
Finally Gene got up from his reading chair and went downstairs to see if all the doors were locked, he said; but in reality he went softly out the kitchen door and walked down to the garage with slow, careful tread, stopping to listen, every minute or two. But no sound reached his ear save the dreamy notes of a tree toad. The little gray clouds drifting through the sky were hiding the moon and making the back yard quite dark. Somehow a vision of his mother’s face came to him, that last day when she had called him to the bed side and reminded him that she left Joyce as a sacred trust to his care. She told him that of course he would understand the home was always hers and something like reproach came and stood before his self-centred, satisfied soul and gave him strange uneasiness.
He stepped quietly into the garage and looked around in the darkness. There was no car as yet, but he meant to purchase one the minute the estate was settled up. He felt sure there would be plenty of money to do a number of the things to the house that he had already planned. It was not really a garage, though he had called it that ever since he came home to live with his mother, it was only the old barn with a new door.
But there was no sign of any Joyce inside the old barn, though he searched every corner and even opened the door of what used to be the harness closet.
He closed the door and went outside, puzzled, a trifle anxious, not for the safety of the girl whom he had driven from the only home she had by his unsympathetic words, but for the possibility of what she might have said to some neighbor with whom she might have taken refuge for the night. And yet he could not bring himself to believe, that Joyce would be so disloyal to his mother’s family as to let others know of a rupture between them.
He went outside and walked around, but there was no sign of any one, and the dew glistened evenly on the new grass in the sudden light as the moon swept out from behind a cloud and poured down a moment’s radiance. There were no marks of footprints on the tender grass anywhere near the building.
Standing in the shadow of the big maple half way to the house he called: “Joyce!” once, sharply, curtly, in a tone that startled himself and shocked the tree toads into sudden brief silence, but the echo of the meadow came in sweet drifts of violet breath as his only answer. His voice sounded gruff even to himself and he realized that she would not come to a call like that. If she had strength of purpose enough to go at his harsh words she would not come at such a call. He tried again:
“Joyce!” and Joyce would have been astonished could she have heard his voice. He had never spoken to her with as much kindliness of tone in all his life, not even when he wanted to borrow money of her. Yes, he had really descended to asking her who had but a small allowance from the bounty of his mother, to loan it to him. And she had always been ready to lend graciously if it was not already promised for some necessity. He would soon have kept her in bankruptcy had not his mother discovered it and forbidden Joyce to lend any more, telling her son to come to her in any need.
He stood there sometime calling into the darkness trying various tones and wondering at himself, growing more indignant with the girl for not answering, calling her stubborn, and finally growing alarmed, although he would not own it really to himself.
But at last he gave it up and went in, putting it aside carelessly as if it were but a trifle after all. The girl was stubborn but she would have to come back pretty soon, and the lesson would only do her good. As for the neighbors, they must prepare a story that would offset anything she might tell them. And what did the neighbors matter anyway? This wasn’t the only place in the world. They could sell the house and move where Joyce had no friends, then there would be no trouble. Joyce would have to stick to them, for she had no way of earning money anywhere else. The idea of teaching school was fool nonsense. He wouldn’t think of allowing it. She would always be taking on airs even if she paid board, and then they would get no work out of her, and she would not be pleasant to have around.
With this reflection he fell asleep, convinced that Joyce would be found safe and sound and sane on the doorstep in the morning.
About this time the new young superintendent of the high school who was taking the place of the regular superintendent while he was abroad for six months studying, settled down in his one comfortable chair in his boarding house room with a bundle of examination papers to look over. This was not his work, but the two teachers who would ordinarily have done it were both temporarily disabled, one down with the grip and the other away at a funeral, and since the averages must be ready before commencement he had volunteered to mark these papers.
It was late and he was tired, for there had been a special meeting of the school board to deal with a matter connected with the new addition to the school building, and also to arrange to supply the place of a teacher who had suddenly decided to get married instead of continuing to teach. There had been much discussion about both matters and he had been greatly annoyed at the prospect of one young woman who had been suggested to fill the vacancy. She was of the so-called flapper variety and seemed to him to have no idea of serious work. She had been in his classes for the last six weeks, and he became more disgusted with her every time he saw her. The idea of her as a colleague was not pleasant. He settled to his papers with a frown that portended no good to the poor victims whose fate he was settling by the marks of his blue pencil.
He marched through the papers, paragraph after paragraph, question after question, marking them ruthlessly. Misspelled words, how they got on his nerves! He drew sharp blue lines like little swords through them, and wrote caustic foot-notes on the corners of the pages. The young aspirants for graduation who received them in the morning would quiver when they read them and gather in groups to cast anathemas at him.
But suddenly he came to a paper written in a clear, firm hand as if the owner knew what she was talking about and thought it really worth writing down. The first sentence caught his interest because of the original way in which the statement was made. Here was a young philosopher who had really thought about life, and was taking the examination as something of interest in itself, rather than a terrible ordeal that must be gone through with for future advantage. As he read a vision of a clear smooth brow, calm eyes lifted now and then to the blackboard, gradually came back to his memory. He was sure this was the quiet young woman with the beautiful, sincere, unselfish face that he had noticed as he passed through the study hall that morning. There had been half a dozen strangers in from neighboring towns for examination. Only this one had attracted him. He had paused in the doorway watching her a moment while he waited for a book which the attending teacher was finding for him, and had marked the quiet grace of her demeanor, the earnest expression of her face, the pure regular features, the soft outline of the brown waves of hair, the sweet, old-fashionedness of her, and wondered who she was. He had not been long in the town and did not know all the village maidens, yet it seemed as if she must be from another place, for certainly he could not have been in the same town with this girl and not have marked her sooner somewhere in either church or shop or street? The busy day had surged in and he had forgotten the face and thought no more of the girl. But now it all came back with conviction as he read on. He turned to the end of the paper for the name “Joyce Radway.” Somehow it seemed to fit her, and he read on with new interest, noting how she gave interest to the hackneyed themes that had become monotonous through reading over and over the crude, young answers to the same questions. How was it that this young girl was able to give a turn to her sentences that seemed to make any subject a thrilling, throbbing, vital thing? And she did not skim over the answers with the least possible information. She wrote as if she liked to tell what she knew, as if her soul were en rapport with her work, and as if she were writing it for the mere joy of imparting the fact and its thrill to another.
“Now, there’s a girl that would make a teacher all right,” he said aloud to himself as he finished the paper writing a clear blue “Excellent” upon it with his finest flourish, “I wonder who she is? If she’s the one I saw I’ll vote for her. I must inquire the first thing in the morning. Joyce Radway. What a good name. It fits. She’s the assistant I’d like if I have my way, unless I’m very much mistaken in a human face.”
CHAPTER III
Joyce had walked a long way on a long gray ribbon of road before it wound up hill and she began to realize where her steps were turning. Up there on the top was the dark outline of the old Hill Church, its spire a black dart against the luminous night sky. A fitful moon gleamed palely and showed it for a moment, still and gray like a little lone dove asleep, and about it clustered the white stones of the graveyard on the side of the hill sloping down toward the valley. One tall shaft showed where lay the dust of the rich, old, good man who gave the land and built the church, and others less pretentious flocked close at hand, a little social clique of the select dead who had clung to the old church through the years of their life, who there had been christened, married and buried.
With a catch in her breath like a sob Joyce hurried on, realizing that it was here her heart was longing to go, where she had left all that was mortal of her precious Aunt Mary.
It was not that she had any feeling that the spirit she loved was lingering there near its worn out earthly habitation, it was only that the earth seemed so alien and she so alone that it did her good to creep away to the quiet mound that some kind neighbor had already made velvety with close shaved turf.
She felt her way to the place, close beside the mound where her mother had been laid. They had always kept it neat and carefully tended when her aunt was alive, and now she sank down between the two graves with her hands spread broodingly, anguishingly over the tender grass, and her face dropped down on its coolness. How long she lay there she did not know. The hot tears flowed relievingly down her cheeks and fell into the cool grass, and overhead the quiet sky, with the single star in a clearing among the floating clouds, and now and then the serene, busy moon above it all, quite as if the world was going as it should even though hearts were being broken.
A sense of peace stole gradually upon her, and the ache drifted out of her weary limbs, and out of her lonely heart. It was almost as if some comfort had stolen upon her from the quiet grass, and the busy, serene heaven above. She did not feel afraid. She had no sense of the presence of her aunt, only a deep, sweet understanding that this little spot was sacred and here she might think entirely unmolested.
It might be that she slept for a space, for she was very weary and the day had been so hard, but she was not sure. Rather it was as if she were just resting, as she used to rest in her mother’s arms and be rocked, long ago, the first thing she could remember. The sense of her troubles, and her terrible situation had slipped away from her. She was just resting, not thinking. When suddenly the sound of voices—voices quite near, broke upon her, as if they had suddenly rounded the hill and were close at hand, coming on. Cautious voices, albeit, with a carrying sibilant, and something familiar about one of them. She could not tell why they struck terror to her soul, nor at what instant she realized that they were not just foot travellers going on by, but were coming toward her. She found herself trembling from head to foot.
“Look out there, Kid,” said the familiar voice, “Don’t skid over that poor stiff. Those headstones aren’t easy to play with and we can’t afford to lose any of this catch. Its worth it’s weight in gold you know, rare antique! We ought to make about four hundred bucks apiece out of this lot if we place it wisely.”
The footsteps came on, and suddenly as the moon swept out from the clouds for an instant she saw four dark figures silhouetted against the lighter darkness of the road, stealing slowly into the cemetery among the graves carrying burdens between them, heavy, bulky, shrouded burdens. The hurrying clouds obliterated everything again, but she could hear the soft thud of their feet, as they slowly felt their way. An occasional dart of light from a pocket flash flickered fitfully on a headstone here and there as she watched with bated breath. They seemed to be coming straight toward her, and for an instant she thought of trying to flee, but a great weakness overcame her, so that she could hardly breathe, and it seemed impossible to rise. Then the flashlight jabbed into her very eyes, and she crouched against the sod and wished there were some way to get down beneath it out of sight.
“What was that, Kid?” the voice whispered. The tiny flash fluttered here and there on the grass all about her as she crouched. In a moment they would be upon her. It seemed the culmination of all the terrible day. Her heart throbbed painfully, while she waited a long minute, hearing distinctly the oncoming feet swishing softly in the grass, the labored breathing of those who carried the heavy burden, the cautious whispers, and then, could it be? They were only two graves away. They were passing by. They were going toward the back part of the cemetery.
She lay absolutely motionless listening for what seemed hours. The soft thud of burdens laid down was followed by the sound of a spade plunged deep in the earth, and the ring of metal as it was drawn forth and hit against a stone.
By and by she gained courage to open her eyes and then to lift her head cautiously and glance about. Her frightened heart almost stifled her with its wild beating. The sky was luminous off to the east and against it the five dark figures were darkly visible, three with shovels, and one with a pick, the fifth watching, directing, occasionally flashing a spot of light on a particular place. On the ground a long line of something dark like a box or boxes. Had they murdered some one and come to bury him in the night, or were they grave robbers? She found herself shuddering in the darkness, and when she put a trembling hand to her brow it was cold and wet with perspiration.
She began to wonder if she dared to try and get away, and measured the distance with her eye. The men seemed so close when she considered making a move, especially the one with the flashlight! Its merciless eye would be sure to search her out if she attempted flight. Perhaps it would be safer to lie still till they went away and trust that they would go out by the same path they had entered and not discover her. Yet when she tried to relax and wait she was trembling so that it seemed as if the very cords that held her being together were loosed and she was slowly becoming useless like Dorothea’s big bisque doll that lay on a trunk in the attic with its head and arms lolling at the end of emaciated rubber cords. She had a frightened feeling that if she lay still very long she would become unable ever to move again, the sensation that comes in nightmare.
