Back in the kitchen she had left silence reigned, and all the pans and
kettles and bowls which 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 coffee-pot 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 pet her up she’ll expect it every time.
That’s the way mother spoiled her, let her do every thing 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 sha’n’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 wouldn’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 happens 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 diningroom 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
diningroom 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, loth to leave until their young victim should return
repentant and they could tell her just what they thought of her for her
base ingratitude. When you know you have done wrong yourself there is
nothing so soothing as to be able to scold some one 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 that old mummy to get well,” she said discontentedly. “It’s awfully
awkward waiting this way and not knowing what is ours. Why can’t some
one 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 to 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 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 ass 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 innings.
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 in to 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 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 save the dreamy notes of a tree toad. The little gray clouds
drifting through the sky were hiding the moon and making the back yard
quite dark. Somehow a vision of his mother’s face came to him, that
last day when she had called him to the bed side 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-centred, satisfied soul and
gave him 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 any 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 any one,
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 half way 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 of 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 sometime 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 pretty 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, then 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 fool 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
boarding house 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 grip 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 portended no good
to the poor victims whose fate he was settling by the marks of his blue
pencil.
He marched through the papers, paragraph after paragraph, question
after question, marking them ruthlessly. Misspelled words, how they
got on his nerves! He drew sharp blue lines like little swords through
them, and wrote caustic foot-notes on the corners of the pages. The
young aspirants for graduation who received them in the morning would
quiver when they read them and gather in groups to cast anathemas at
him.
But suddenly he came to a paper written in a clear, firm hand as
if the owner knew what she was talking about and thought it really
worth writing down. The first sentence caught his interest because of
the original way in which the statement was made. Here was a young
philosopher who had really thought about life, and was taking the
examination as something of interest in itself, rather than a terrible
ordeal that must be gone through with for future advantage. As he read
a vision of a clear smooth brow, calm eyes lifted now and then to the
blackboard, gradually came back to his memory. He was sure this was the
quiet young woman with the beautiful, sincere, unselfish face that he
had noticed as he passed through the study hall that morning. There had
been half a dozen strangers in from neighboring towns for examination.
Only this one had attracted him. He had paused in the doorway watching
her a moment while he waited for a book which the attending teacher
was finding for him, and had marked the quiet grace of her demeanor,
the earnest expression of her face, the pure regular features, the
soft outline of the brown waves of hair, the sweet, old-fashionedness
of her, and wondered who she was. He had not been long in the town and
did not know all the village maidens, yet it seemed as if she must
be from another place, for certainly he could not have been in the
same town with this girl and not have marked her sooner somewhere in
either church or shop or street? The busy day had surged in and he had
forgotten the face and thought no more of the girl. But now it all came
back with conviction as he read on. He turned to the end of the paper
for the name “Joyce Radway.” Somehow it seemed to fit her, and he read
on with new interest, noting how she gave interest to the hackneyed
themes that had become monotonous through reading over and over the
crude, young answers to the same questions. How was it that this young
girl was able to give a turn to her sentences that seemed to make any
subject a thrilling, throbbing, vital thing? And she did not skim over
the answers with the least possible information. She wrote as if she
liked to tell what she knew, as if her soul were _en rapport_ with her
work, and as if she were writing it for the mere joy of imparting the
fact and its thrill to another.
“Now, there’s a girl that would make a teacher all right,” he said
aloud to himself as he finished the paper writing a clear blue
“Excellent” upon it with his finest flourish, “I wonder who she is? If
she’s the one I saw I’ll vote for her. I must inquire the first thing
in the morning. Joyce Radway. What a good name. It fits. She’s the
assistant I’d like if I have my way, unless I’m very much mistaken in a
human face.”