Myra had read it with growing fear clutching at her heart, while fat little Olive reached for a couple extra pieces of cake during her mother’s preoccupation and babbled: “Who’s a murderer, Daddy? Did you mean Uncle Rowan? My uncle Rowan? Who’s a thief an’ a murderer? Will they have ta hang Uncle Rowan?”
Myra had turned and slapped her offspring soundly on her fat greedy little cheek and jerked her down from the table, holding her wrist in a firm grasp and shaking the cake out of her clutching hands. Then she started toward the stairs pulling the howling child after her.
“No, I won’t gooooo—to—bbbed!” howled Olive. “I was only asking mmm-my daddy a qqq-uest-ion! Daddy! Daddy!”
Mark took a quick stride and rescued the child summarily.
“Now, Myra, don’t take your anger out on a baby!” he said in cutting contemptuous tones. “We’ve only one child and I don’t intend to have her abused just because of your precious family!”
“My daddy won’t let you send me ta bed when I only ast him a question!” wailed Olive belligerently. “My daddy’ll kiss me an’ hug me, won’tcha, Daddy? You shan’t slap your little dirl! I’m Daddy’s baby!”
Myra had escaped to her room while Mark consoled his child belowstairs by another piece of cake.
The evening afterward had not brought relief. Myra had cried all night and had taken the early morning train for her home, using money that she had hoarded for a new hat to pay or her ticket. Her husband’s taunts had rankled in her soul all through the journey and she arrived at the farmhouse with swollen eyes and bottled up wrath enough to set on fire the course of nature in great shape. The disappointments of her life had seemed to culminate in this disgrace of her young brother, and she was ready to visit her suffering on any head that came in her way, even her beloved and much tried father and mother.
She burst into the big quiet kitchen where Hannah was baking some delicate custards, along with her bread, to tempt Charles’s appetite. She was weary with weeping and exhausted with her long hot walk in the sun from the village, fairly running sometimes to escape kindly offers of lifts from neighbors and to hide her swollen eyes from peering curious ones.
“Oh, Mother, what is this awful, awful thing that Rowan has done now?” Myra cried as she flung her arms around her mother’s neck and buried her face in the comforting shoulder that had always been her refuge in childhood.
Hannah’s arms went hungrily around her and she held her child close, her heart thrilling to have her thus one more, needing her. It had been so long since she had had her to herself. Always that watching Mark was around casting contempt at Myra for being sentimental. Acting as if Myra had always been his, and her parents had not right to even a look from her anymore—and perhaps never had had. So Hannah held her girl close and smoothed her hair and said softly, “There! There! My darling girl! Cry it out on Mother’s neck. Dear child! Mother’s so glad to have you!”
And suddenly Myra’s arms held tightly to her in a great fierce hug that showed her own thwarted longings and repressed love, and Hannah was glad. She wished Charles were here to see this, and to share in it himself. Poor Charles. He sometimes said sadly, “Seems as if our girl has sort of forgotten us. But I suppose that’s to be expected now she has a home and a child or her own. Still it’s sort of hard to feel she doesn’t love us as she did!”
But she did! She did! Hannah could feel that straining clasp and exulted in it. Perhaps it was just that Myra had always been afraid of Mark’s sarcastic remarks. Perhaps she was trying to be loyal to him and not have her parents see his faults. Dear child! She would learn someday through her own child, likely, that one could not hide things like that from a mother and father!
Myra presently gained control of herself and straightened up, lifting her poor disfigured face with the tears upon it. “Oh, Mother, what is it all about? Is it true that Rowan has disgraced us all? How could he? How could he, with all the care and training that has been given him?”
Hannah pushed her child gently into a chair and there was a look of gentle dignity upon her face, an almost reproof. “Sit down, dear! You are overwrought. You don’t realize what you are saying. Your brother has not done anything wrong. How could you think he would? I had not realized that you would even have heard the talk that is going around. Quiet down and let me get you a wash rag to wash your face. Poor child! If I had thought you would hear all sorts of rumors I would have called you up and told you not to worry. Why didn’t you call me at once if you were worried?”
“Call you? And have all the neighbors on the line hear us? And besides, Mark would have thought it was awful for me to spend the money to telephone.”
The tears were coming again and Hannah brought the nice cool cloth and put it over the swollen eyes and the hot forehead of her daughter. “There, there, dear! You must have had a hard time! I understand.”
But Myra was off again, working off all her overwrought nerves, and the stings of the years on her mother, without in the least realizing how much she was revealing.
“Mark says it is just what he expected!” she sobbed. “He says that he has always known Rowan was dishonest! He says he knows things about Rowan that we don’t any of us suspect, and he won’t tell me what they are!”
Hannah’s lips shut with a sudden snap of anger, and her eyes flashed, but Myra was weeping too hard to see it, and Hannah had control of herself in a minute.
“Well, of course that isn’t so,” she said quietly. “Mark has had no opportunity to know anything about Rowan. We’ll just have to forgive him for that. People get prejudices, you know.”
“Oh, but Mother, he says he knows this is so. He says Rowan will be tried for murder if Sam Paisley dies, and we all will be drawn into it and disgraced forever. He says that it is all your and Father’s fault. That you have been perfectly blind to what Rowan does and have humored him in everything—!” Myra was beside herself now, beyond her own control. The tortures of the years were having their revenge at last, and her nerves were tossing back her resentment on her poor tired mother. Just because she couldn’t stand it all anymore and wanted to get the burden off her own heart. Just because she wanted her mother to tell her it wasn’t any of it true, and soothe her and make things all right and comfortable again, as she used to do for her when she was a little child.
“Look here, Myra!” said her mother suddenly in a stern mother-voice of command. “Do you realize that you are talking about your own dear brother whom you have known and loved all your life, long years before you ever saw Mark? Will you believe something against him said by a comparative stranger?”
Myra looked up startled and wailed: “Yes, but Mother, he’s my husband!”
They faced each other with consternation between them, as if suddenly the old sorrow had become a new peril looming up like a wall and shutting out any hope of comfort.
Then Hannah slowly lowered her glance to the floor and said in a sorrowful tone, “Yes! I know—!” And there were volumes unuttered between those words.
Then after a minute she drew a deep breath and said kindly, but firmly, “But even husbands can be mistaken! And yours certainly is!” Then after another pause she added, “Everybody, of course, is human and liable to make mistakes. We’ve got to forgive and make allowances for that. But, Myra, nothing, nothing excuses you for being disloyal to your brother! You need not answer Mark back, nor try to argue it out with him, but in your heart you must be loyal to your brother! It is unthinkable that you would not be!”
But Myra was weeping harder than ever. “You always did stand up for Rowan! You humored him too much! Mark says you always loved him more than you did me! He says you were partial to Rowan!”
It was the dregs of the rancor from Mark’s daily nagging that Myra could not help flinging out, but Hannah did not quite see that at first and the words hurt her cruelly. She stood there aghast and looked at her child, with the saddest look on her face that a mother can wear.
“Be still!”
> It was Charles who spoke, sternly, with the tone he had not used to his girl since she was a little child and had said, “I won’t!” to her mother once. He had come in without their hearing and stood looking at his daughter with outraged justice on his face.
“Don’t you ever dare speak to your mother like that again, Myra!” he said again into the startled silence that followed his first order.
Myra cowered and covered her face with her hands, her weary shoulders sagging half in exhaustion, half in shame.
It was a tempestuous day, Myra half the time in hysterics, half the time saying bitter things about her brother.
But at last in the late afternoon, after much explanation, and alternate soothing and sternness, she left, reluctant at the last.
“She is almost sick,” said Hannah, looking up pitifully, as Charles came back from taking Myra to the train. Hannah’s eyes were red with weeping the tears she had not shed over Rowan’s disappearance.
“She is sick!” said Charles sternly. “If it hadn’t been for her little girl I would have insisted on her staying overnight at least, even if Mark raised the roof about it afterward. She is utterly run down under that man’s persecutions. She doesn’t dare call her soul her own! Our little girl! Oh, Hannah, I feel that I was very much to blame that I didn’t look into his character and background more before we ever let her marry him. Oh, I wonder that any man dares to let his daughters marry! I was very much to blame.”
“Now, Charles, don’t blame yourself. You know we tried to make her see that she didn’t know him very well.”
“Yes, but we didn’t try hard enough. We were too afraid that we would say something we would have to live down. We didn’t want to be unfair to him, and we were unfair to our own child!”
“Well, Charles, we thought we were doing the best we could, and it is too late to do anything now. We must just try to see what we can do for her.”
“Yes, poor child!”
Then the two old saints went to their knees again, while the waters of sorrow deepened around them. They rose with the other-world light in their faces once more, to go on trusting.
Three days later, in the dead of night, Rowley’s Road House burned to the ground, and poor old Nance, all alone and dead drunk on the dregs of the liquor the Rowleys left behind them, burned to death in her miserable bed in the lean-to.
Chapter 6
Nance, left alone, had gone on from hour to hour not knowing what to expect. She had sold gasoline to all who came until the gasoline gave out, and then because no more had been ordered she had to stop. The men had never allowed her to order gasoline.
She had sold drink until people stopped coming. Only travelers stopped at Rowley’s after the night of the burglary. Strangely the townspeople came no more. Nance didn’t understand it until a passing boy answered her questions and told her the rumors about Rowley’s that were going around.
Vaguely she thought it over in her sodden mind as she went on mechanically with the things she had been hired to do. Having known sin and crime all her life familiarly, she was not surprised. She was dully resentful at being left here in a place of suspicion and peril, yet she was without initiation to do anything about it. At first she went on getting meals for no one because she had been told with oaths that she was always to have a meal ready to serve them. But by and by when she had eaten up all the meals and there was very little left to make meals with, as the Rowleys had left no great amount of supplies when they decamped, she cunningly realized that there was still liquor, and no one to prevent her helping herself.
So she drew from the small stock on hand and drank until she was beyond fear, and then she prepared herself more drink, and lighting a candle, because she had been forbidden to leave the electric light burning all night in her dreary lean-to room, she set it on the floor near her bed and lay down with her bottle to drink and sleep. The boy had told her that the road house was under suspicion. He had said the police were likely going to raid it tomorrow and take her to court to tell all she knew. Nance knew that she must not tell anything except what the men had told her to. She knew that they were somewhere, and that wherever they were they had ways of meting out vengeance to her if she failed to obey their commands. It made no difference even if they had gone to far wilds, they would somehow reach out long arms of gangdom and get her. She did not want to be questioned. She did not mean to be questioned.
So she drank heavily and slept.
The night was very dark around Rowley’s. even the ragged moon was behind a cloud, and only the night creatures made dreary sounds.
The weird little flickering spent candle reached up licking tongues of yellow flame now and then as its tallow dripped lower, and lower, and Nance upon her bed drank and muttered and slept heavily, flinging a scrawny arm out until the cover of her bed slipped down, down, and the candle could at last lick out its hungry tongue and reach it. Then it leaped up in triumph and blazed along the bedding, enveloping the unconscious woman, flaring high along the wall, devouring as it leapt, gaining fury, as it swept higher, until it roared and swung upward, bursting into a rosy cloud that lit the heavens for miles around.
Then, too late, the watchman in the village saw the light and sent in the alarm. Bells began to ring, and firemen rushed from their homes. A belated engine got under way and went wildly to the fray, startled citizens pulled on quick garments and went flying in noisy cars to the scene. But Nance would not be there for questioning when the police came in the morning. Through fire she had passed to a higher tribunal.
The rickety old buildings made a beautiful blaze and were quickly consumed. The place was a furnace when the fire company arrived, and beyond all hope of being saved.
Vaguely aware of a woman who had been one of the dwellers at Rowley’s, the townspeople tried their best to enter and rescue her if she was still there. The boy who had talked with her the day before insisted she must be there. But entrance was impossible. They called aloud to know if anyone was inside, but no answer came. Nance was lying very still, her spirit gone.
The roof was crashing in now, the rickety walls tottering. Iron beds appeared like weird skeletons, toppling on crazy floors that stood at strange angles. Tables and chairs and bottles were revealed, starkly reminding of revelry long past, hinting rudely of the life that had been lived behind those commonplace walls. The assembled townspeople looked and shuddered.
As soon as possible they soaked the place with water, drenching steaming floors until one could walk within on heavy shoes and not be burned. The lean-to had been largely buried beneath falling debris and it was not until late in the afternoon that they found the pitiful group of charred bones that was all that poor old Nance had left behind her in a world that had perhaps sinned against her as much as she had sinned.
They buried her sorrowfully down in the meadow behind the site of the house where she had labored, and they put a crude cross to mark the place.
It was the next morning that they discovered the hiding place beneath the old floor of the lean-to, directly under Nance’s bed. And it was quite by accident that they came upon it.
Because of the robbery and the consequent suspicion that hung over the road house, the police kept vigilant watch since the fire and had carefully searched for a safe where at least some of the booty might be hidden.
They had indeed found a safe, a small inexpensive affair that was hardly worth using as a safe, for two men could easily have carried it off, root and branch. But they found in it only a few unimportant papers and a small pile of change, the money Nance had taken in from the sale of gas and beer. Nothing that had the least possible bearing upon the robbery.
Disappointed, after poking around among the ashes, the police had withdrawn. There remained only two or three firemen to guard the smoking remains and keep the village children from getting into mischief.
The large blistered gas pumps stood starkly in front of the ruins, their charred hose like writhing serpents, disconnected and scattered ov
er the ground. Electric light wires sprawled in slimy network of mud and water and ashes. Broken bulbs of red and blue and yellow that had garlanded Rowley’s Road House in its better days appeared like dirty berries here and there in the grass. Small boys were discovering them and bulging their pockets full of mementoes of the dramatic event, the most dramatic event that had come into their young knowledge! Not only fire, but robbery, perhaps murder—for Sam Paisley was not yet out of danger—and a woman had burned to death! No dime novel or movie theater could equal that for thrill.
It was while walking there among the debris, penetrating toward the lean-to, throwing burnt ends of beams out of the way, and poking among the ashes, that Jack Connelly the fire chief came upon a large iron cover! It had a heavy ring in the middle, sunk even with its surface so that it would not protrude above its smoothness. Perhaps he would not even have noticed it, covered as it was with ashes, if his foot as it kicked aside the rubble had not given back a hollow sound, like an echo.
He looked down startled and stepped again, then stamped. It was unmistakable. There was an empty space below it. What did that mean?
He took a shovel and cleared the place around it for several feet, and there it was. An iron cover with a cement rim around it!
He stooped and lifted the ring from its socket and pulled the heavy lid up, but his strength was not enough to swing it free alone and he had to call another man to help him lift it and swing it away from the opening. Then he turned his flashlight down and saw a hollowed place like a small room, and over in the far corner of the darkness a large safe sunk in the wall!
He shut off the light and turned to his companion.
“Bob, this here is something else! It may be something and then again it may not be! Send the kid down to tell them perlice ta come back. I ain’t agonta be responsible fer lookin’ inta this alone.”