THROUGH THE DARKNESS
All unconscious of Cousin Penelope's musings, Caroline stretched herself
in the fresh cool bed, in her pretty room. She thought of the party next
day, and all the lovely days, brimful of music and happiness, that were
to follow. For Jackie had promised that she should stay there
undisturbed at The Chimnies, until Aunt Edie came at the end of summer.
How kind Jackie was, and how good, and how brave! She wasn't afraid of
cows, or Cousin Penelope, or boys, or the dark. Caroline, for instance,
would have been frightened to death to go the three miles in the black
night down into the Meadows. But Jackie had just whistled and walked
away, as unconcerned as anything. No, there was no one in the world so
good or so brave as Jackie. With that worshiping thought uppermost in
her mind, Caroline fell asleep, as safe and sheltered as care and love
could make her.
Meantime the brave Jackie, with her heart in her throat, was making the
best of her way through the vast blackness of the onion fields, back to
the Conway farm.
The first of the walk wasn't so bad. On Longmeadow Street she met
people, by ones and twos and threes, on their way to prayer meeting or
to the Post Office. She could see, too, the light from house windows
that streamed across the broad, well-tended lawns. She enjoyed the
luxury of pitying herself, all alone in the dark, with no one to care,
while other children, in those lighted houses, were being tucked up in
bed.
But after she left the last houses of the village, Jacqueline stopped
enjoying the drama of the situation which she had chosen. The fields
stretched round her endlessly. The sky was black as despair, and all
stuck with stars that were sharp as screams of rage. The edges of the
sky were tucked in behind the coal black mountains, from which the
Indians in old days used to swoop down upon the settlement.
Jacqueline caught her breath, and looked hurriedly over her shoulder. Of
course there were no Indians nowadays. They couldn't be lurking that
moment in the fields. The onions grew too low to hide an ambuscade. It
was only the wind that made their tops rustle in a queer way that pumped
the blood out of her heart and set it throbbing against her ear-drums.
No one could hide in the onion fields, she knew. But in the little
gullies where the brooks flowed that drained the fields--that was a
different matter. Every time she drew near a culvert, she ran as fast as
she could upon her tired legs, through the heavy dust, until the danger
point was passed. Even if there weren't any Indians, there were Polish
field-hands. Good, honest men, most of them, Aunt Martha maintained. But
some of them were worthless and drunken. There was a half-witted
Kaplinsky boy, too, who sometimes chased younger children, with horrid,
half-articulate threats.
Jacqueline sheered into the middle of the dark gray road to avoid the
patch of inky shadow that a solitary elm tree threw halfway across it.
She wasn't crying, as Caroline would have cried. Jacqueline cried, as
you may have discovered, only when she was angry. Now her breath came
thick and strangling, and her legs felt weak, and there were hot
prickles of sweat on her temples, and cold prickles on the back of her
neck. But she didn't cry!
Some one was coming along the road behind her. No mistake! She could
hear voices--men's voices. On instinct she did what a moment before she
couldn't have been hired to do. She scuttled off the road and hid in the
damp bed of the brook that bounded the Whitcomb acres. There she
crouched with her head on her knees, until she heard steps shuffle along
the culvert. She peeped up fearfully. Three figures of men were
silhouetted against the sky. They paused on the side of the culvert
(fortunately!) that was farthest from her, and spat into the brook, and
spoke to one another in a foreign tongue, and laughed--ogreishly, as it
seemed to Jacqueline--and then walked on.
They had actually gone. She could breathe again. But she wouldn't dare
walk on for hours and hours. They might loiter. She might overtake them.
For what seemed to her half the night, she crouched in the clammy bed of
the brook. Oh, she thought to herself in those long, dreary minutes,
what a silly she had been! Why hadn't she stepped right up and told
Cousin Penelope who she was? Well, she couldn't, because she had gone
and promised Caroline--a crazy promise--she hated herself because she
had made it--she knew she was going to hate herself when she made
it--just the same a promise was a promise, and you kept it, even though
the sky fell.
But why had she ever promised? It would be dreadful at the farm now--but
there wasn't anywhere else to go. Perhaps Aunt Martha would send her to
an Institution. She didn't think any longer that an Institution would be
fun. She thought of the workhouse boys in "Oliver Twist," who never had
enough to eat--and she hadn't eaten herself now for ages and ages. She
knew what hunger was! Oh, she didn't want to go to an Institution--and
she didn't want to go to the farm--and she couldn't go to the
Gildersleeves', because she had promised Caroline! Perhaps she'd better
stay right there in the ditch and die--and then wouldn't everybody be
sorry!
Just then she heard something rustling near her. She didn't stop to find
out whether it was a harmless field mouse, or a snake, equally harmless,
though perhaps less attractive. She didn't stop for anything. She
scrambled out of that ditch and started on a sore-footed run for the
Conway farm. Aunt Martha--Neil--_anything_ rather than the loneliness of
the ditch upon a pitiless, black, Pole-infested night!
She was stumbling along the road, as she felt that she had been
stumbling for a lifetime, panting and coughing as the dust that she
kicked up got into her nose, when she heard from before her the chug and
chatter of a laboring Ford. Nearer and clearer, she caught the gleam of
headlights that lit up a fan-shaped space of dust and dark green onion
tops.
For a second she halted in her tracks. Then she reflected that people in
cars can be as undesirable as people on foot, and once more she plunged
off the road. This time she found no friendly ditch to hide her. She
just plumped down flat among the onion tops and lay gasping.
The Ford trundled past the spot where she had left the
road--stopped--began to back. Jacqueline "froze," like a scared little
animal. Oh, _why_ couldn't she wake up, and find that this was just a
horrible nightmare?
Some one leaned out of the Ford.
"Jackie!" a voice called clearly and firmly. "Is that you? Jackie!"
Jacqueline found her feet, though a second before she would have vowed
she hadn't enough strength left ever to stand again. She flew,
stiff-legged, through the crumbly dust and the strong-smelling onion
tops, into the road. She cast herself upon the running board, she flung
herself into the seat of the car, and hung about the neck of the woman
at the steering wheel.
"Oh, Aunt Martha!" she cried. "Aunt Martha!"
And Martha Conway, if you'll believe it, grabbed that bad Jacqueline and
hugged her just as tight as if she were clean and sweet, instead of the
dirtiest, sweatiest, tiredest ragamuffin that ever crawled penitently
out of an onion bed.