“I must go!” he said. “There wouldn’t be a minute to spare if he is gone where I think. But I’ll bring him back! You can trust me! I’ve got to go in the house for something before I start. Where will you go? Will you come in with Mother?”
“Oh no,” said Joyce, drawing back, “I must get right home! I’ll have plenty to face as it is. Nobody must know I came here.”
“Of course not!” said Rowan. “I ought to have thought of that!”
A moment more and Joyce was fleeing back through the pasture, her eyes starry with hope and Rowan’s kiss stinging sweetly upon her lips. It was the first time Rowan had kissed her. He had kissed her and said she was precious! But she mustn’t think about that now. She must only think about her brother. The kiss had been a sort of seal from Rowan that he would help her. It was almost sacred. She must not think of it any other way—not now, anyway.
She could feel his strong arms around her still, as her feet flew on across the rough pasture, going with swiftness where they would have had difficulty in walking in the day, the thrill of her spirit carrying her on as if she had wings.
And Rowan, slipping off his shoes, was stealing up the back stairs, hoping to get away without his mother’s knowing. Strange he should expect to, seeing he had hardly ever succeeded in getting away with anything like that in his life! Mother Hannah was a canny woman and had sharp ears.
He had a little money up in his room. He would need it, if things turned out as he expected.
He got the few things he was after and stuffed them in his pockets. He was on his way down again, his shoes in his hand, when he saw his mother stranding at the foot of the back stairs in a shaft of light that came from the dining room door. She was smiling up at him.
“Your dinner is ready, laddie!” she said gently, not to startle him.
“Thanks, Mother!” He smiled at her embarrassedly just as when he was a little boy about to steal away on some forbidden project. “But I’ve got to go somewhere right away. I can’t stop for dinner. It’s something important, Mother! You’ll have to trust me!”
Various emotions played over Hannah Parsons’s face in the darkness of the kitchen, but what she said was:
“All right! Here’s a sandwich to take with you! Put your shoes on and I’ll have it in a paper bag!”
She stepped to the table in full view of him as he sat on the lower step of the stairs putting on his shoes. She swept four slices of bread with butter, laid two slices of hot beef within, reached to the cupboard drawer for a paper bag, and added a thick slice of maple cake. All in one motion it seemed, and Rowan, even in his absorption and haste, took a moment to be glad of the kind of mother he had. He knew her heart was bursting with anxiety, but she would not ask him where he was going. It was her way. He was not a child anymore. He knew, too, that she was like a brave soldier sending him off with food into the unknown.
“When will you be back, laddie?” she asked in a voice that tried to be cheery.
“I can’t tell, Mother.” Rowan finished tying his shoe and stood up to take the lunch she had prepared.
“I—asked because your father said he wanted to see you. He asked that you stay up for him. Something important, he said. You know it’s his Building Association night!”
Rowan was at the door with his hand on the knob, and she was not following him but her eyes were straining him to her very soul with yearning to protect him. He read the look:
“I can’t be sure,” he explained hurriedly. “I’ll come back as soon as I can, and you and Father can trust me, Mother!”
He turned his head to look back and add:
“Tell Father it’s something he would do if he were in my place. It’s something I must do, and I—can’t explain! If I don’t get back tonight, tell him I’ll see him in the morning!”
“All right, my son!” Hannah Parsons’s voice kept steady until the end, and she stepped to the window and looked out into the darkness as the rusty old car rattled away into the night again. He hadn’t exchanged his car! Probably he was disappointed! Oh, she prayed that this thing he had to do was not any childish vengeful thing about his car, not any fancied dishonesty that must be avenged, not any unreasoning idea of crude honor.
And, Lord, don’t let him be going to Rowley’s, or anything like that! she prayed. And yet it was straight toward Rowley’s that Rowan Parsons was driving.
A girl with dark hair blowing around her face stood out on her own back steps and listened to the clatter of his old machine, and pushed from her any doubt or dismay that pressed on her mind when she saw which way he was going. Remembering those strong arms that had been around her, that kiss on her lips, she would not doubt him. She would not let herself even think that perhaps Rowan and Jason had been mixed up together somehow in something—it was all so vague—a thing built up of sneers and looks and half-formed sentences, like the whiffle of a whiplash in air, writhing for a victim. So her eyes grew starry in the dark again as she rested on the word of Rowan that he would bring back her brother.
Did either of the two watchers who listened to the fading clatter of the old car have hint of premonition that the lad was going far and that it would be long before he returned? If so the shadow was not dark enough to dim their thought of how he had looked and what he had said as he left them, and their hearts swelled with joy in him in spite of all their fears.
The wind had risen and was driving swift purple clouds across the dark sky when Joyce went into the house, seeking to steal upstairs to her room without seeing anybody. But her stepmother’s ears were keen, and her voice was sharp.
“Joyce! That you at last? Come in here. Your father wants to see you!”
Joyce came into the sitting room, smoothing her hair back from her white face. Out there on the steps in the night she could feel Rowan’s arms around her protectingly, hear his voice telling her she was precious, but in here in the bright lights that her stepmother loved she was all alone and must protect herself. Perhaps God was here, too, somewhere, but He always seemed very far away in that atmosphere. She told herself that she had no reason to cringe this way before her stepmother, but still she could not get away from the horror of her words. They seemed like acid in a wound.
Her father sat there stern and angry. He regarded her as somehow to blame for the state of things that had descended upon their household again.
“Well,” said Mrs. Whitney, leaning back in her wide rocker and swaying luxuriously back and forth as if the present occasion were one she enjoyed, “I suppose you’ve been out hunting darling baby-brother again. What success did you have this time? Gallivanting around in the dark in the country when most respectable young women are in homes carefully protected, or out under proper escort! What you think of yourself I’m sure I don’t know. What the neighbors will think will be plenty. Wait till I hear it served up to me tomorrow over the phone, or at my bridge club. But don’t let me interrupt you. Do tell us all the latest news!”
Joyce had grown very white and angry now, and she could not trust herself to speak. She gave her stepmother one long haughty furious look, turned wild eyes of appeal toward the implacable father who sat there in his silent anger. Then realizing how hopeless it would be to appeal to him, she turned on her heel, dashed up the stairs and down the hall to her room, locking the door and dropping to her knees beside the open window.
Oh, God, she prayed, don’t let her ever find out where I went. Please, please don’t!
And then she heard her father’s heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Joyce!” he thundered at her door.
“Yes, Father,” she answered bravely, opening her door.
It was dark in her room. Only the weird light of the night at her window showed the clouds whirling tempestuously across a midnight blue. He stood blinking in the doorway with the brilliant light of the hall chandelier behind him, looking strangely baffled for an instant.
“Where is the light switch?” he roared. “Why are you here in the d
ark?”
She did not answer but switched on the light and stood frail and white facing him, her big tragic eyes pleading with him for mercy.
“Where is your brother?” he roared, made savage by the vision of her sorrowful face. “And why should you be acting as if you were on a stage playing a tragedy? Where is Jason, I say?”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“When did you last see him?” His eyes fixed her icily as if he thought she might be tempted to conceal something.
“At breakfast.”
“How did he act?”
“Just as usual. He seemed quite happy. Was whistling as he went away.”
“And when did you hear about this—this—outrageous—!” He paused for a word and ended in blowing his nose resoundingly.
“When he didn’t come home to lunch,” answered Joyce as steadily as she could. “Aunt Libby asked the grocery boy if he had seen him, and he said no and told her he wasn’t at the bank anymore.”
“And didn’t you do anything about it? How did you know the grocery boy knew?”
“Mother called up the bank. She didn’t tell me what they said.”
Joyce turned slightly away from the merciless glance in her father’s bitter eyes and saw the star, shining amid the fitful clouds. It quieted her to know that somewhere out there was Rowan hunting for Jason. She couldn’t tell her father that. It would only make him more angry. He resented Rowan. He tried to make out that it was Rowan’s fault that Jason went with a lot of “rough-scuff” as he called the Rowley crowd. But it comforted her to know that Rowan was looking for him. And if comforted her to remember that he had told her she was precious, only she hurriedly tucked the thought far back in her mind lest her father should hint it out of her—he had such a way of piercing the soul of his children with scathing words!
“Was there—any trouble—at breakfast—?” he began hesitantly and after a pause, speaking in a lower tone, “Did Jason have any altercations—with”—he cast a glace toward the head of the stairs—“that is—I mean, did anything happen—at breakfast?”
“No,” said Joyce, turning a pitying glance back at her father. Did he, too, feel those terrible family arguments, the sharp, barbed tongue of the woman whom he had married—or did he think it was all his children’s fault? She looked speculatively at his bitter eyes and sour mouth. It seemed as if she faintly remembered other days in her childhood when those eyes were merry, not bitter, and the mouth pleasant and laughing. Always he had been a stern disciplinarian, but there had been times in her little girlhood when she loved her father greatly, and when they had beautiful hours together. But that was when her own mother was living.
She went a little nearer, feeling a sudden pity for him, which of course she must not express.
“No, Father,” she said gently, “there was no unpleasantness at all. Everything was quite cheerful, and Jason went off in a good mood.”
“And you have no idea what it’s all about? You can’t think of anywhere he could be, or why he should go off like this?”
“Mr. Whitney!” called his wife from the foot of the stairs. Her voice was like a fire siren, insistent, demanding, persistent, and she always called him “Mr. Whitney” when she knew his children were listening. It somehow seemed to give her the upper hand over the whole family.
“Why are you staying up there so long when you know I want to talk to you? Mr. Whitney!”
Her father adjusted his voice to sternness.
“You say you don’t know why he should be asked to resign his position, Joyce? Well, I’m quite sure it must have been his fault somehow, whatever the cause. It comes down to the same thing. You have so pampered him and coddled him, so humored his every wish, that he is just a worthless lazy nobody. It is really all your fault! It only goes to show what a thankless task it is to rear children!” He turned and walked loudly downstairs, the noise of his footsteps blending with his wife’s voluble words as he reached the floor below, and Joyce sank down by the window again. She drooped her head on her arms on the windowsill, and suddenly remembered Rowan’s arms around her and his lips kissing away her tears. Then something glad and new began to mingle with her prayers.
Over across the pastures Hannah Parsons got out the hardest task she could find and sat down to work late. She always did that when there was hard sailing ahead—something to fear or something to bear—she looked for the hardest task she could find and worked at it with all her might. It seemed to make the time go faster.
So now in her big rocker by the sitting room table, she sat and darned a lot of Rowan’s old socks that she had almost decided were not worth darning. She had indeed considered cutting them up for polishing cloths.
But instead she set delicate, careful stitches as fine as weaving, that would not have hurt a baby’s sensitive skin, and Rowan was no baby. She tried to smile as she darned away, thread after thread, clipping the ends off with her sharp scissors, inserting her capable hard-worked hand in the sock. No darning balls for her! She tried to think how pleased Rowan would be to have that particular pair of socks with the blue-and-white clocks resurrected. He had been sorry when they wore out. He liked them. She tried not to remember the glint of determination, the look of a knight about to go on a pilgrimage, in Rowan’s eyes when he had told her this errand of his was important. Perhaps it was important. She longed with all her heart that her son should be a true knight and go on the right kind of errands, but he was young enough and eager enough to mistake values, and to think a matter of vindicating his own or some friend’s rights a sufficient cause for sacrifice. She hoped and prayed that Rowan was not just going off on some hot-headed tangent. She must believe in him. When he looked like that and said she could trust him, she had always been justified in believing in him. Oh, she must believe in him! She could not sit here quietly and wait unless she did. There had been a noble look in his eyes when he went out, a look like his father when he was young!
Oh, she must not think about him that way. There was a tear streaking down, splashing on her glasses and obstructing her view. She could not sew and cry. Darning was very delicate work.
She took her glasses off and smiled across at the cat on its cushion as if the cat were a lady come to call, just to show herself she was not crying. She wiped off the splash on her cheeks and gave a quick dab at her eyes before she readjusted her glasses and took up her darning again.
Now, she must think about something else. She would turn her thoughts to Myra, her other child. Married these six years now and gone to live in a city a hundred miles away. Of course Hannah wasn’t very happy about that either, because she had never fully trusted the man whom Myra married. And their little girl, now five years old, looked like him, which made it hard. Hannah had never been able to understand why Myra liked Mark Townsend. He wasn’t their kind. A hard, compact man with shrewd eyes and a thin little tight mouth that could shut like a rat’s. Of course she had never breathed that to Myra. She hadn’t dared. For when she came out of her delusion and discovered that Myra had really fallen for this prim uninteresting little man with the hay-colored hair and the sharp sandy bristles on his upper lip, the marriage was a foregone conclusion, and she didn’t want to say anything that she might have to live down the rest of her life. So she had shut her lips and lived through the wedding, and the going away, and had tried to keep the house cheery for Charles and Rowan after her girl was gone. But if had been hard work, and many a night her pillow had been wet with slow silent tears, long after her dear Charles was sleeping soundly.
She hadn’t even breathed her distrust to Charles after the first dismayed questionings. She hadn’t been quite sure how he felt about it. He had never said much, after that first hesitant sentence when they were alone: “Seems as if that wasn’t quite what we had expected for her, was it, Hannah? But I guess it must be all right. She seems to be set on it.”
And Hannah had sighed and said, “Well, I don’t know. I sometimes wonder whether the child isn’t ju
st in love with being in love, and having a home of her own. It doesn’t seem possible she could love him, does it? She is such a lovely little thing, and he seems so much too old for her; though really isn’t, of course, in years.”
“Well,” said Charles with a companion sigh, “I suppose your folks said that about me when you were married!”
“They certainly did not!” flashed Hannah and then laughed.
“Well, you know we think pretty much of our one girl!” said Charles and sighed again. “But she seems happy. I guess it’s all right.”
So Hannah had made the best of her sorrow and done her weeping silently at night when it wouldn’t hurt her man. But she had not ceased to miss her bright-haired girl who had been always singing around the house.
They didn’t come home much after the marriage, only a day now and then. And Hannah always fancied that Myra had a nervous look whenever Mark was around, a fear lest she would offend him and call down upon herself a reprimand in front of them all. And the little granddaughter hadn’t been much satisfaction, either. Her father seemed to own her so thoroughly that there was no room for any grandparents, not even in the ordinary way. If she gave her a cookie, he would always turn out to be around and say, “Now, Ollie, you know your mother doesn’t allow you to eat between meals!” Ollie! Such a silly name! But of course it was after his sister who died, and it was his child. He had a right to call her Pickles if he wanted to, she supposed. Olive! As if she were something to eat.
And presently Olive took on his attitude toward her grandmother and began answering her back, always belligerently. “You aren’t my mother. My father don’t want you to tell me what I should do!” She wasn’t even kissable! And Myra had been so sweet and dear. When Hannah showed her affection by a kiss the child would jerk away and rub off the kiss hard, with her fat hand, and say: “My daddy don’t allow me to be kissed!” And sometimes she would stick out her tongue at her grandmother.
Hannah thought of Myra, her own five-year-old, sitting beside her there in her little chair with her own sewing, darning a doll’s diminutive sock. Sitting in the little rush-bottomed chair, always wanting to do just what Mother was doing. Charles had made her a little ironing board and bought her a tiny iron, and a stove and dishes. How Charles loved to bring things home for Myra! Her little Myra sitting in the little chair, that was now up in the attic.