CHAPTER VII
Themorning dawned with a luminous pink in the east and a sudden twitter of birds. April, and four o’clock in the morning; asleep in a hammock under a tree. What could be more perfect?
Joyce, half conscious of the wonder all about her, had come to life with the first bird, and a sense of peace upon her. The daylight was coming and God had kept her. She might go on her way now and be undisturbed. Then a stab of pain at the memory of the night before brought her further awake. A low flying bird almost brushed her cheek with its wing, and the petals of the apple blossoms drifted down in her face. Such exquisite perfume, such melody of many throats, would it be something like this when one wakened in heaven and heard the voices of the angel songs?
Beyond her sheltering tree the dim outlines of the old house loomed gently in the gray morning, such peace and safety all about. How good to be resting here.
But Julia Hartshorn’s niece had picked out this especial morning to get up early and do some house cleaning before going to school, and just as Joyce was allowing herself to drift off again into drowsiness Jane Hartshorn’s alarm clock set up such a clang into the melody of the morning that Joyce came to herself in terror and sat up looking fearfully toward the house. Not for anything would she have them discover her there. She must get up and get out before the light. She must hasten now for some onewas evidently going to arise at once, and it was not safe to remain another second.
Hastily she felt for her handbag, realized that she had only one book instead of two, groped in the darkness for her hat which had fallen to the ground, and slid softly out of the hammock.
A glance toward the house showed a light in one of the upper windows and in a panic she stole breathlessly from bush to bush and from shadow to shadow till she reached the gate and the high road. Then a new fear overtook her. She would run the risk of meeting early milk carts, perhaps stray tramps if she walked along through the village. Some one might recognize her. It would not do at this early hour in the morning. Where could she hide until a respectable hour for a young woman to be out alone? How could she explain her presence there? For she was not one of the modern girls who go where they please and let people think what they like. She had been taught that there was a certain consideration for one’s reputation that was right and perfectly consistent with independence. One of the precepts that Aunt Mary had ingrained into her nature had been that good old Bible verse, “Let not your good be evil spoken of” and she had grown up with a sane and wholesome idea of values that helped immensely when she came to a crisis anywhere.
She hurried down the road which would presently merge into the village street, as noiselessly as possible, and cast about for a possible retreat. Then she came to a low rail fence skirting a pasture. The breath of the cows came sweetly in the gray dawn, mingled with the smell of earth and growing things. She could look across awide expanse to wooded hills several miles away. There seemed to be no buildings to suggest the presence of humans, and cows were safe friends—at least most of them. She could keep close to the fence and climb if there happened to be a bull in the lot. With a hasty glance backward and each way she climbed the fence and dropped into the pasture, skirting along its edge, and down away from the street. It was still too dark for her to be visible from the road, and she would surely find somewhere to sit down and wait until a respectable hour.
She made her way safely through two pastures, stumbling now and then over the clumps of violets, or little hillocks of grass, but the meadow was for the most part smooth with the cropping of the cows, and it was growing lighter all the time.
In the second pasture the ground dipped till it came to a little rivulet tinkling along over bright pebbles, and giving an absurdly miniature reflection of the dawn in pink and gold as it ran; and here, under a great old chestnut tree, she dropped down and looked about her.
Off to the right perhaps half a mile away there was a red barn, and house beyond it with smoke coming from the chimney. Farther away a village church spire rose among the trees. It was all so quiet and peaceful with the first tinge of red light from the sunrise putting a halo upon everything. Joyce never remembered having been out at this hour before, all alone with the spring. The fear of the night before had fled and it was as if she were sitting safe watching God make a new day. She wondered as the miracle of the sun began to appear in a great ruby light, what this day would bring forth for her. It hardlyseemed real to her yet, what she had passed through since she left home. The experience in the cemetery was like an awful dream. She shuddered to think of it. Was it because an old friend had fallen from a high pedestal where she had placed him many years ago? Was it because a nameless fear hovered about her, and she could not bear to search out in her mind what he might have been doing? Whatever it was she realized that she must put it away until she had time and privacy. There were more important things to decide now and she must keep her poise and plan her day. It would soon be light enough for her to go upon her way and she must know where she was going and what she should try to do.
In the first place she must find out how much money she had with her. She had very little of her own any way in change, and in her hurry she was afraid she might have left that behind. She opened her handbag and turned it carefully upside down in her lap, quickly sorting out its contents, the lace, the handkerchiefs and the little trinkets in one pile, the papers and letters in another, and oh, joy, she had brought her purse. She opened it quickly to assure herself of its contents. Yes, there was the gold piece that she had been saving so long, the precious gold piece that had been a present from her own mother when she was a tiny girl. Ten dollars had seemed a great sum when she was small and Aunt Mary had encouraged her to keep it and use it for something nice that she would like to keep always as a gift from her mother. That she would not use except as a last resort. She snapped the little inner pocket shut and turned to the next compartment, counting the pennies and dimes and half dollars and quarters carefully.There were three dollars and sixty-five cents, the change from the five dollar bill with which she paid for her gloves to wear to the funeral. Last she opened the little strapped pocket that held her bills. She had been carefully hoarding her last month’s allowance, and the few dollars saved from the months before to get a new coat and some things she would need for the winter in case she passed her examinations and got a school to teach. But she had been obliged to dip into her savings several times just before Aunt Mary died, and afterward to get things for Aunt Mary that Eugene did not think of or consider necessary, and now she was not sure just how much she had left. She counted, slowly, one ten dollar bill, three fives, a two dollar bill, nine ones, and two silver dollars. It looked a lot as she went over it again to make sure, thirty-eight dollars, and with the three sixty-five it made forty-one dollars and sixty-five cents. Of course the ten dollar gold piece made it fifty-one in all, but she was not counting that. That was to be saved at all hazards for the thing that she wanted most as a gift from her mother. Not unless life itself were endangered would she touch it, she resolved.
But forty-one dollars ought to keep her if she were careful until she could earn more. It didn’t look a lot when one considered that she was starting in the world, but just suppose she hadn’t anything. Girls had been in a predicament like that before. God was good to her. She would have to save every cent carefully, and get a job of some sort at once. She must not waste a day. Jobs were not easy to find, either, when one could give no references. She would not dare give references because somehowEugene would make things unpleasant for her. No one must find out where she was. She realized that Eugene and Nannette felt that they had a good thing in her to do their work and look after the children, while they went around and had a good time, and that they would not easily let her go. They would not stop at talking a little against her if by so doing they could lose her a job and bring her back to take care of them. This conclusion had been forcing itself upon her for some time slowly, and had been fully revealed by their actions of the day before. She did not want to make any trouble, nor any talk in the town, but she was fully resolved not to go back to them. She felt that if Aunt Mary were here now, in the light of all the things that had been said to her since the funeral, she would not advise her to remain there. Indeed, there had been hints now and then before Aunt Mary was so sick, such as “If you should ever consider it advisable not to live with Gene and Nan, dear,” or “You can’t tell what may develop when you get to teaching. I know Nan isn’t easy to get along with—.” But these were only hints, and Aunt Mary had expected to get well. They all had expected her to, until the last three weeks of her illness. Joyce had shrunk from talking about the possibilities of death, and so it seemed had Aunt Mary. After all, it was her responsibility now, and she was doing what seemed the best for all. She could never live in Eugene’s house. Her breath seemed stifled. How could she study and have her light watched every night? How could she be hampered in her comings and goings if she were to earn her own living? No, she had been right to come away. Perhaps the break might have been done more formally, notprecipitated in such a headlong way, that was her greatest fault to jump headlong into a situation, but even so it would likely have been harder. She could hear even now the long arguments before she had brought the Masseys to her viewpoint. Indeed she doubted if she would ever have brought them there, or have been allowed to go away if they had really thought she meant it. She was half surprised at herself that she was really gone from home so easily, half expected to have Gene walk to her out of the dim of the morning and order her home. She remembered then for the first time that Gene had been fuming about the delay in the reading of the will and likely she ought to have remained until after that out of respect to her aunt, but after all, if Aunt Mary had been going to leave her something, some furniture or a little bit of money, while it would have been nice to have it, it would only have gendered more strife. Why not let Gene have it all? That would likely compensate for the loss of her service in the family, and it would have been hard to stay there and see Nan turn Aunt Mary’s house upside down, perhaps sell or dispose of some of the dear old things that had grown precious through the years. It was just as well that she was gone before it came up at all. When she was settled in some nice place and everything fully assured she would write some letters to her old friends and to Gene and Nan and tell them where she was so that there would be no talk about her going. And she knew Nan well enough to be sure that until such time as they heard from her Nan would cover her going by some clever story of a visit to friends. She thought that it would not be more than a few days before she was in a position to write.
Having settled her finances she took up the pile of papers and letters, tied them in a neat packet and bestowed them in the pocket of her serge dress. She was like a bird let out of a cage. She could not go back, not while the sunshine of the new day was coming, not even if it grew dark and lowering. She would rather quiver in the heart of her own tree than be caged again for the pleasure of others and obliged to sing whether she felt like it or not.
As she reached this decision and put the little packet of letters firmly in her pocket a ray of sun reached out a warm finger and touched her hair, and she realized that the day was come and she must soon go on her way. Hastily she went through the other things in her lap. The trinkets and lace she folded into a handkerchief and pinned it inside her dress. Having thus lightened her handbag she set about making a meagre toilet.
The brook was at hand, sparkling and clear, in which to wash her face, and she had a tiny mirror in her bag to tidy her hair. By way of breakfast until she could do better she folded one of the examination question papers into a cup and drank a long, sweet draught.
While she was setting her hat straight, far in the distance she heard a humming sound, and for the first time she noticed the poles and wires of a trolley line perhaps half a mile away over the fields. Sure enough! That was the new trolley line that had just been completed. She could ride on it as far as it went and then walk to another line perhaps. Somehow now that she was away she wanted to go far enough away from home to be really in a new atmosphere, where people would not find herand tell the Masseys about her. She must get at least a hundred miles away from home, perhaps more, or it would be no use going at all. Yet she dared not take much of a ride on the train, it would eat into her small hoard too much and leave her nothing to get started on when she found a new home. But a trolley! One could go a good many miles for five cents. She strained her eyes to watch for the car and soon spied it, a black speck moving from the east, growing momently larger and more distinct against the brightness of the morning. There would likely be another one going in the opposite direction soon. Could she make it across the fields before it came? They would probably run every half-hour. If she missed this next one it would not be so long to wait for the next. Was it too early for a girl to board a car in the open country? She eyed the sun. It could not be more than five o’clock. She decided to try for it, and picking up her small effects was soon on her way across the fields.
Fortune favored her, and a car came along soon after she arrived at the highway. She boarded it and found a seat in the end next to a laborer with a pickaxe and muddy boots, who was fast asleep and did not even know when she sat down. Most of the men in the car were laborers and were nodding drowsily, scarcely looking at one another. She was the only woman in the car, but they paid no heed to her, and she dropped back into the seat as the car lurched on its way, thankful that her hasty glance revealed no acquaintance from Meadow Brook or Heatherdell. She put her head back against the window and closed her eyes and her senses seemed to swim away from her. She suddenly realized that she had had nosupper the night before and no breakfast but spring water that morning. All the strain of the day before and the terrible night seemed to climax in that moment, and for an instant she felt as if she were losing her consciousness. Then her will came to the front and she set her lips and determined to pull through no matter how hard the ride or how long the fast. She was young and this was her testing. She must not, she would not faint.
The car stopped for a moment to let on some more tired-looking men going to their work, and a whiff of spring blew in at her window fanning her brow. She thought again of the hand of her mother, and wondered if God were reminding her that He cared, and new strength seemed to come into her.
She was awakened from a half drowse at the next stop by the sound of a voice that sent terror through her heart. It was the same hoarse voice breaking out in raucous laughter that she had heard half subdued in the graveyard the night before, the one they had called “Kid.”