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 everything before her.
“Let her alone!” she heard Gene sneer loudly. “She’ll go out to the garage and boohoo 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 for the fur neckpiece. It was 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 someday. 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 hairbrush, her toothbrush—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 that had been slipping, slipping down lower and lower went out of sight and left only a ruby light behind, and all around 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 2
Back in the kitchen she had left, silence reigned, and all the pans and kettles and bowls that 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 coffeepot 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 coddle her, she’ll expect it every time. That’s the way Mother spoiled her—let her do everything 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 shan’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 won’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 hap
pens 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 dining room 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 dining room 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, loath to leave until their young victim should return repentant and they could tell her just what they thought of her for her shameful ingratitude. When you know you have done wrong yourself, there is nothing so soothing as to be able to scold someone 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 the old mummy to get well,” she said discontentedly. “It’s awfully awkward waiting this way and not knowing what is ours. Why can’t someone 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 of 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 the 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 fool 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 chance. 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 into 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 to 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 except the dreamy notes of a tree toad. The little gray clouds drifting through the sky were hiding the moon and making the backyard quite dark. Somehow a vision of his mother’s face came to him, that last day when she had called him to the bedside 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-centered, satisfied soul and gave him a 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 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 anyone, 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 halfway 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 from 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 some time, 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 p
retty 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, and 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 foolish 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 boardinghouse 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 flu 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 indicated no good to the poor victims whose fate he was settling by the marks of his blue pencil.