THE DISBROWS
The three girls made up their minds to tell no one of their suspicions
concerning the disappearance of Simeon Pace’s money. But Azalea could
not but talk it over with Pa McBirney, and Thomas McBirney could not
resist cogitating about the matter with Haystack Thompson, and he, in
turn, was impelled to go with it to his trusted pastor, Absalom Summers.
And Absalom whispered it to his Barbara, and Barbara—but perhaps she told
no one. In looking the matter over afterward, she was almost sure that
she had told no one. At least she hadn’t told of it right out. And
Carin spoke of it only to her father; and he mentioned it merely to the
banker Heller, and he only spoke of it to his fellow officers in the
bank, and they told no one but their intimate friends.
As for Annie Laurie, she refrained with a mighty effort from confiding
her suspicions to her aunts, and she warned her friends not to tell them.
Had they mulled that matter over and over during the long, lonely winter
evenings, the poor girl would have felt as if she were losing her reason
as well as her fortune. Indeed, the winter had settled down heavily over
the Pace household. The dairy met with reverses. Two of the best cows
died. The accounts would not balance. And worst of all, the helpers
were hard to manage and would not take orders willingly from Miss Adnah.
The strong will and hand of Simeon Pace were sorely missed.
And along with all this distress was the sense that Annie Laurie and her
aunts had of burning injustice. Somewhere in the world was money in
abundance, belonging to them. Just how much it was they could not even
guess. Of Mr. Carson’s purchase money of twenty thousand dollars they
felt sure. He had Simeon Pace’s receipt to show for that. But there was
other money beyond question—the savings of years. The old aunts, waking
in the night, would arise and fumble in the places in which they had
looked so often; and Annie Laurie, strong and sensible as she was, found
that it required all of her will to keep from following their example.
This girl, so straightforward, so energetic and hopeful by nature, found
it almost intolerable to sit around, patient under injustice. She
proposed to Mr. Carson that he should go to Hector Disbrow and accuse him
of the theft of the money—tell him the whole thing was known, and that he
must refund it or be arrested. But Mr. Carson shook his head.
“As a matter of fact, my dear,” he said, “the thing isn’t known at all.
It is only surmised. Azalea, in semi-darkness, thought she saw your
father put something in his arm. She may have been mistaken. Or even if
she were not mistaken about his doing so on that particular occasion, it
doesn’t in the least follow that your father carried the money in
question there. Above all, it does not follow that it was in the arm the
day of his death; or that, even if it was there, that the undertaker
stole it. The tin arm must have hung in the room for days. Many persons
visited that room. Any one of them might be guilty.”
“Then is there nothing at all that can be done, sir?”
“Nothing at present. I am watching Disbrow—indeed, I may say the whole
community has him under suspicion. If he is guilty be sure that sooner
or later it will come out.”
“But here we are, getting deeper and deeper in debt to you!”
“Annie Laurie, I am convinced that every cent I have advanced you will be
paid back to me in time. You are a brave girl. I trust you completely.
I feel that you are going to make a success of life. Meantime, you are
living on borrowed capital. But so are thousands of others. Back of it
all, you must remember, is the fine farm as security. It is a perfectly
clear business proposition. Have no fears, child.”
She strengthened under the tone he used in speaking to her. If he had
pitied her, she would have broken down, but he merely put it to her that
she was playing her part in the world, and she braced herself to play
that part well and not disappoint him or any of her other friends.
She tried to avoid Sam Disbrow, yet it seemed to be her luck to meet him
oftener than usual. He was very sorry for her, she could see, and he
assumed his brightest and heartiest manner when he was with her, in his
efforts to help her to be happy.
One day when there was a feeling of spring in the air, and she had gone
along one of the little winding paths through the pine wood, she met him
with his gun on his shoulder and his dogs at his heels.
“Why, Annie Laurie,” he cried, “are you out hunting too?”
The deep suspicion and anger she felt toward his father put some
irritation into her tone as she said:
“And why are you hunting, Sam? I thought you were working in the box
factory office.”
“Well, so I was. You see, I had finished school here and dad couldn’t
afford to send me away. I might have gone anyway, and somehow worked my
way through Rutherford Academy, but Hannah said I oughtn’t to leave
mother. So I stayed—though it didn’t seem to me quite the best thing to
do. But now, suddenly, dad says I’m to go away to school. At first I
refused. I was afraid it would mean pinching and scrimping for all the
rest of them at home. But dad said, no, things were a little easier with
him now, and I’d better take the chance while I had it.”
Annie Laurie stood before him in the path staring, while Sam waited in
vain for her congratulations.
“So, yesterday,” he went on in a somewhat dashed tone, “a fellow came to
the factory looking for work. He said he needed it very badly—had his
mother to look after. So I spoke up and said I was leaving to go into
the Rutherford Academy at the spring term, and that I’d get out and let
him have my place. You see, there were a number of things I wanted to do
around home before I went away. And I was just crazy to get off in the
hills for a day or two. That’s the way with us down here, isn’t it,
Annie Laurie? We can keep under roof only about so long. Then we have
to go roving for a spell.”
Annie Laurie hardly heard what he said. She could with difficulty keep
from breaking out with:
“But where is the money coming from that is to send you away to the
academy? Didn’t you ask your father how he came by this money so
suddenly? Have you no notion of what he has done to earn this money?
Can you be living a lie—just as he is?”
There swept back to her memory the words the minister had said that day
in church when she had caught Sam’s eye, and had known what he was
thinking.
“Plant a lie in the garden of your soul,” he had said, “and it will
flourish worse than any poisonous weed. Do not think you can uproot it
when you will, for it will grow and grow till it is stronger than you,
and not all your prayers and tears can rend its terrible roots out of
your life.”
Sam had wondered, as she had, why the preacher should have talked like
that to a congregation of good people. For they had all seemed good to
her; but now she realized that if the Disbrows were living a lie perhaps
other persons whom she knew and liked were doing so, too. For the first
time in Annie Laurie’s life a tidal wave of suspicion, distrust and
hatred of the world swept over her, and it seemed like a wicked place—a
place made up of beings who tried to injure each other.
She felt so ill that she leaned against a tree.
Sam seemed to take no notice, however. He was watching his dogs, and
talking on and on in his cheerful way.
“And another fine thing is going to happen,” he said. “Dad has got up
spunk enough at last to send Hannah up to Williamsburg to have her eyes
operated upon, and sis has found the courage to go. Do you know, I
believe that after she gets those poor eyes of hers straightened she
won’t be so shy and queer as she is now. I suppose she loathes going out
where she’ll meet people, when she has to look all over the premises
whenever she tries to fix her eyes on the person she’s talking to. Then,
if dad could only get some one in to take care of poor mother, Hannah
could go away to school too, perhaps, and grow to be a little more like
other folks.”
Annie Laurie knew that Sam would not have talked about his own people in
this free way to anyone but her. The two had spoken out their minds to
each other for years, and it had come to be second nature for them to do
it.
And now here they were with a black secret between them. She, Annie
Laurie, who had meant always to be Sam’s true friend, was suspicious of
him! Yet she could not look at him, standing there smiling in the spring
sunlight, his eyes full of enthusiasm, and think him guilty of any
knowledge of wrong-doing on the part of his father.
How very, very strange life seemed! Once she had thought it like a road.
One had only to walk ahead, doing right and nodding to the passers-by,
and all would be well. Now she saw how it twisted, turned, and
split—this road—and how difficult it was to tell which turning to take,
or which by-path to seek.
Then an impulse came over her almost as strong and swift as one of those
which were forever besetting Azalea.
“Sam,” she said, “I haven’t been in your house for years. Do you know, I
would like to go. I’d like to go now. Do you think I might?”
Sam flushed a little and hesitated a moment.
“Why, yes, Annie, I don’t know why you shouldn’t. Mother doesn’t see
many people, as you know; and they won’t be expecting you, but if you’ll
take things as you find them—”
“Oh, yes, Sam,” she aid dryly. “That’s just what I mean. I want to take
them as they are. I want to get acquainted with your family.”
He looked pleased and softened at that.
“Do you, Annie Laurie?” he said with a little thrill in his voice.
“Well, that sure is nice of you. Not very many of the neighbors seem to
care whether they live or die. Come along, then. Let’s go now.”
So they turned in the direction of the Disbrow house, Annie Laurie
leading and Sam walking behind, nervously smiling, the dogs at his heels.
They turned in at the Disbrow place, passing through the sagging gate,
and Sam uttered his first apology.
“I’ve tried and tried to get that old gate to stay up on the level,” he
said. “But seems like we never have the proper tools to do anything
with; and anyhow, the wood’s so rotten it won’t hold a nail, hardly.”
“Oh, a sagging gate is nothing,” answered Annie Laurie dully.
The little garden had not yet felt the influence of spring, and it looked
dejected enough. Fragments of last year’s mosquito netting dangled at
the windows; the paint of the little house was weather-worn; the arms
were off the bench on the porch. Green shades kept the light from making
its way into the low rooms. Indeed, so dim was the room into which Annie
Laurie stepped that at first she could see nothing. The heat was fairly
sweltering, and the atmosphere was lifeless and stale-smelling.
“Mother,” said Sam gently, “I’ve brought a friend to see you—Annie Laurie
Pace.”
“Oh,” sighed a voice from the gloom, struggling between reproachfulness
and natural politeness, “have you? How do you do, Annie Laurie?”
“I’m very well, thank, you ma’am. Are you feeling any better?”
“No—no, I don’t seem to get any better. Sam, you’ll have to pull up a
shade. Annie Laurie won’t be able to see a thing.”
Annie Laurie closed her eyes for an instant. She dreaded what she would
see, and yet she had long wished to know the truth—to know what Sam’s
strange home was like. She heard the shade being raised, and with
something of an effort she opened her eyes and looked about. What she
saw gave her a shock. Her own home was ugly enough, as she knew well;
but poverty was here, and worse than poverty—indifference to appearances.
The almost bare apartment wore that dejected and unhappy aspect of a room
for which no one cares and in which no one hopes. It was a sad room—a
sick room—with a long couch and its occupant for the chief objects.
Yes, the couch was long and wide, though the woman who lay on it was so
small. Figured brown calico covered the bed, and the woman was dressed
in a wrapper of faded blue. There was no collar about her throat—only
the coarse open neck-band, showing a shriveled neck. Her face was
bloodless and bleached like a vegetable that has grown in the dark, and
out of it looked a pair of weary eyes, beneath which were deep, dark
circles. Her hair—brown, touched with gray—was brushed back straight and
flat from her bulging brow, and this, with her high-arched eyebrows, gave
her an almost Chinese look. Her hands, thinner and more apathetic than
any hands Annie Laurie ever had seen, lay on the calico cover.
“It’s not very often I have light let in here,” she said. “It makes my
head ache so.”
Annie Laurie did not say that she ought not to have let it in for her, if
that was the case. She couldn’t really feel that this was the case. She
was glad the light was in the room for once, and by it, she moved toward
Mrs. Disbrow’s bed, her hand outstretched with something almost like
satisfaction, for she knew as she looked in that woman’s face, that if
her fortune had been stolen from her by the undertaker, his wife did not
know it. She was as convinced of this woman’s innocence when she looked
at her, as she was of her pitiful condition. So she took one of the
claw-like hands in her own strong grasp and sat down beside her. Mrs.
Disbrow’s face was quivering with the excitement of meeting a stranger.
“Sam often talks of you,” said his mother in her fluttering voice. “I’ve
been wanting to see you. You’re a strong, fine girl, Annie.”
“Yes, I’m strong and well,” the girl answered. “I’m very thankful.”
“Well, I haven’t known a well day for years,” said the invalid. “Here I
lie, racked with pain, and I declare I don’t know whether it’s one day or
another.”
Annie Laurie felt herself bracing against this discouraged tone.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t suppose you really have to worry about what
day it is. You have nothing to do—no Monday washing to think of, or
Saturday baking. Some one else does all that for you.”
She spoke merely to present a cheerful side, but Mrs. Disbrow flushed a
trifle. Annie Laurie saw that she had said something that annoyed her.
“Yes,” the sick woman replied still more dejectedly, “I’m nothing but a
drag on my family. I often say to them that it would be better if I was
out of their way.”
“I don’t suppose that makes them very happy—hearing you say that.” Annie
Laurie replied in her hearty way. It really seemed to her as if that was
the unkindest thing a mother could say to her children. “If only I could
have my mother, sick or well, or any way at all, I’d be the happiest girl
in the world. It’s terribly lonely being without a mother—or a father,”
she added almost in a whisper.
Mrs. Disbrow reached out her hand and laid it on Annie Laurie’s.
“Poor girl,” she murmured with what was almost her first thought of
anyone save herself, that winter.
“And—Oh, I feel so sorry for Sam and Hannah, with you ill always,” went
on Annie Laurie. “Of course it spoils their happiness. It seems such a
pity! Isn’t there anything that can be done, Mrs. Disbrow? Doesn’t any
doctor know how to cure you? Haven’t you any idea yourself of what ought
to be done?”
“Well, my husband talks of going West soon,” answered Mrs. Disbrow with
something like vivacity—or rather, like a shadow of it. “I’m looking
forward to that. If we could get to a new place and to a new house, and
if there was something to look forward to, and hope for the children to
make something of themselves, I don’t know—maybe—” her voice trailed off
and her eyes fixed themselves in an aimless reverie on the opposite wall.
So they were going West! That was the plan. The man who had been unable
to give his family a chance, who had been broken by this long illness of
his wife’s, who had failed to make his place among men, was going West.
His chance had come to him at last. Had it come through theft? Annie
Laurie found herself wishing that they might indeed have the chance,
these poor people who seemed never to have been able to step out into the
sunshine. Yet had they a right to this chance—if it meant her defeat?
Could she let them go this way, while she was left to struggle with
poverty?
The door opened and a girl entered. Hannah! She was so slender that
Annie Laurie, who was broad of shoulder, with a backbone that might have
been made of steel, wondered how the poor thing managed to keep upright.
Her face was ivory-colored, her frock an ill-fitting gingham of a hideous
“watermelon” pink. She turned her dreadfully crossed eyes on Annie
Laurie—or to be correct, turned one of them on her—and looked at her
resentfully.
“This is sister Hannah, Annie Laurie,” said Sam in rather a stifled
voice. “You two girls ought to know each other, you know.”
“How do you do?” said Hannah, miserable with shyness.
“Oh, I’m pretty well, thank you, Hannah,” Annie Laurie answered, and then
she added: “But I can’t say I’m very happy. You wouldn’t expect that.
I’m very, very lonely without my father.”
She had risen and stood before the girl, with her bald little statement
of sorrow, and Hannah, forgetting herself and her fears for a moment,
looked up at Annie Laurie with sympathy in her face.
“Oh,” she said, “it’s too bad. I—I cried after I heard of it.”
She seemed astonished at herself for saying so much, and Sam looked at
her with amazement. Had Hannah actually cried over some one else’s
troubles?
“Did you?” exclaimed Annie Laurie. “Oh, that was sweet of you, Hannah.”
She forgot her Aunt Adnah’s axiom that the Paces seldom kissed, and
leaned forward and planted a warm kiss on Hannah’s cheek.
“I like to know that,” she went on. “You see I feel so—so friendless.”
“Why, with your aunts and all?” inquired Mrs. Disbrow.
“I feel as if I ought to be protecting my aunts, you see,” explained
Annie. “They are old and terribly broken by father’s death. And then,
everything has gone so wrong with us. We haven’t been able to find
father’s money anywhere, you know, and we’re really poor. We’ve no money
to run the dairy on, and the men need overseeing, and I’ve blundered
along with my bad bookkeeping. Altogether, it looks as if things were
going to ruin, and I just can’t bear that, Mrs. Disbrow.”
“Why, you’ve always been so prosperous!” exclaimed Mrs. Disbrow. “My
husband often has spoken of how prosperous your father was, and has
contrasted him with himself. You see, Mr. Disbrow never has got on well
here. His farm has paid poorly, and of course the undertaking business
is of very little consequence in a community like this. I declare I
can’t blame him for being discouraged and bitter and sort of half-hating
the men who are successful. It’s hard to like people when everything is
going against you.”
Annie Laurie swept her glance around the room again, taking in the
brother and sister, and resting it at last on the sick woman.
“I suppose it is,” she said slowly. “I suppose it is. But Mrs. McBirney
says you have to give out liking to have people like you, and that you
have to think you are going to succeed in order to do it.”
“And you have to think well in order to be well, I suppose,” said the
invalid angrily. “I suppose that’s her idea. Well, you can tell her for
me that she’s mistaken.”
Annie Laurie did not look rebuked. She sat still, thinking.
“I know so little about sickness,” she said slowly, “that I can’t even
sympathize the way I ought to, I suppose. Oh, Mrs. Disbrow, don’t you
suppose you could go riding with me? I’m such a good driver, I wouldn’t
let you be shaken up at all. Sam and Hannah could sit beside you to keep
you from being joggled.”
“A pretty sight I’d make!” cried Mrs. Disbrow. “There’s too many of the
neighbors would be peeking out to see what I looked like, after all these
years of being shut away. No, thank you, child, I don’t believe I want
to try.”
“But you could go at twilight. We could go when the neighbors are at
supper. Wouldn’t it be fun, Sam? Could you sit up, ma’am?”
“No, I don’t believe I could. And even if I did, like as not I’d pay for
it the next day.”
“But why not try? Maybe you wouldn’t have to pay for it. Oh, ma’am,
it’s so wonderful to be out of doors. You can’t think what you miss
staying in here—can she, Sam?”
“No,” said Sam, “she can’t have an idea. Oh, mother, you never would
listen to me, though truly I believe you’d be ever so much better if you
would get out. Please try. The three of us will be able to take good
care of you.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then the boy flung out his arms with
sudden passion.
“Oh, mother, mother, please try! Why need we all be so unhappy? Why
can’t we have a little joy like other people?”
Annie Laurie felt the tears leap into her eyes. She had never before
seen Sam as other than the cheerful, hearty boy, but now she knew that
the cheerfulness and heartiness had been an imitation of the real thing.
They had been but his courage masquerading as something else.
Mrs. Disbrow raised herself on her elbow and looked at her son. Suddenly
a great light broke over her. She had not been the only sufferer in that
house. Before her were the two whose youth she had shadowed with her
pain.
“I’ll go,” she said in a strange voice. “When shall it be?”
“Now,” cried Annie Laurie. “I’ll run right home and have the men hitch
up. Oh, Hannah, be sure she’s dressed warm enough. I’ll have something
warm put in for her feet. Oh, Sam, maybe she’ll like it!”
She turned toward the boy with outstretched hands and he caught and held
them for a moment. Then she was off, running as fast as she could to
serve the people into whose house she had gone with the motives of a spy.