CHAPTER XXI
Henrietta's first act on awakening was to look for Lem and, as she might have expected, the boy was gone. Her next was to look at her watch. She felt she must have slept until midday, so different was her physical and mental condition than when she had thrown herself on the bed. For some quite unaccountable reason she felt tremendously strong and buoyant. For a few moments she could not grasp why she felt so, and then she suddenly realized that her cheer of mind was due to the fact that Freeman, for the only time in years, was not a threatening menace, but absolutely under her control. Until she chose to permit him to be clad, he was her prisoner, and as her prisoner, subject to her orders.
When she had drawn on her kimona and tiptoed out of her room on her way to the bath, she glanced at Freeman's closed door and smiled. No need to worry about Freeman for an hour or two.
Half an hour later, fully garbed, she stepped from her room again, and this time she tapped on Freeman's door, gently at first and then more vigorously. There was no response. Henrietta opened the door and looked into the room. It was empty; Freeman was gone.
In the hall, in the corner nearest Henrietta's door, stood a wood box, receptacle for the wood used in the winter stoves, and above this the plaster and lath had been broken. It was in the hole in the wall thus made that Henrietta had thrust Freeman's trousers, crowding them down out of sight. They were still there, and as if in answer to another query that came into Henrietta's mind at the moment, she heard Gay's voice, brisk and happy, speaking to Lorna below. If Freeman had fled, he had not persuaded Gay to fly with him. Probably he had fled with such covering as he could improvise, hoping to arouse one of his boon companions and beg what was necessary, Henrietta thought.
When she reached the hall below she found Gay, Lorna, and Johnnie Alberson there, laughing over some item in the morning Eagle.
“Lem has gone,” she said.
“Good for Lem,” said Johnnie, and he handed her the paper, pointing to a headline.
“Riverbank Loses Only Saint,” the headline said. “Little Brother of Stray Dogs Departs for Parts Unknown. Holy Life Too Strenuous For Saint Harvey of Riverbank.”
Lorna and Johnnie, it seemed, had already breakfasted. Henrietta, leaving the three to laugh over the article in the paper, went to the dining-room and through it into the kitchen, where Miss Susan was thumping at a piece of wet wood in her stove, using the lid-lifter.
“Lem has run away,” Henrietta said without preliminaries.
“And good riddance. Hope I never set eyes on him again, the mean thief! Him and his pa, indeed! Robbin' and cheatin'!”
“No, Lem's not a thief. Here is the money you missed.”
Miss Susan looked at the bills.
“What's that money? I got mine off of him. He did n't go and steal it over again? You don't mean to tell me that young—”
“No. It wasn't your money you found on him. That was money his father gave him—to run away with, I suppose. He did not take your money at all. Miss Susan, Freeman has gone.”
Miss Susan put down the lid-lifter and turned to Henrietta.
“Gone? Run off, you mean? Well, a nice kettle of fish him and you are, I must say, you and your fine husband, lyin' and fightin' with Carter Bruce all over my front yard, and makin' love to Gay and Johnnie! I never heard of such go-ings-on in all my born days. What'd that worthless husband of yours run of! for?”
She looked at Henrietta keenly.
“It was him stole my money, was n't it?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Then he's good riddance, and that's all I've got to say about that,” said Susan. “And the farther that worthless Lem goes and the longer he stays, the better I 'll like it. When you going?”
“Now. Any time. Whenever you wish,” said Henrietta.
“You can't go too soon to suit me,” said Miss Susan. “I've had enough and a plenty of the whole lot of you. If you want to get yourself some breakfast you can, and if you don't want to, you need n't, but I hope I won't see you around too long. I've got to get your room ready for the next boarder that comes, and I'd like to have it empty by noon.”
Henrietta hesitated, but only for a moment. “Of course I'll go if you want me to go, Miss Susan,” she said cheerfully. “You've been very kind and patient with me. I just want to thank you for that. I 'll never forget that. I will have breakfast before I go. I'm ravenous this morning.”
She found the coffee-pot on the back of the stove, and Miss Susan grudgingly opened the oven door and let Henrietta see where her breakfast had been kept warm. Henrietta carried it to the dining-room. She was eating when Johnnie Alberson came in and took a seat opposite her.
“I'm going away,” she said.
“You! Going away! Where? What for?” he asked.
“Miss Susan needs my room; she expects another boarder.”
“But, hold on! You don't mean it, do you? Where are you going?”
“I don't know—yet. Away from Riverbank, I suppose. I have n't had time to think yet. She just told me.”
“But, look here!” he said. “You mean she is sending you away?”
“It seems to be that.”
“It does, does it?” said Alberson, and he was out of his chair and on his way to the kitchen, and did not wait, although she called, “Johnnie, wait!” after him.
Henrietta ate her breakfast slowly. She could hear Johnnie's briskly cheerful tone and Miss Susan's voice—at first hard and obstinate, and then yielding. Johnnie came back into the din-ing-room and sat opposite Henrietta again.
“That's all right now,” he said. “You don't have to go unless you want to. She's willing to have you stay.”
“She is? Miss Susan is? Whatever did you say to her?”
Johnnie leaned forward and smiled at Henrietta.
“I'm an Alberson, you know; one of the River-bank Albersons,” he said. “We are used to having our way.”
“But that's no reason—that's—she would not let that change her mind. You said something else.”
“Why, yes; I did,” said Johnnie. “I told her you were going to marry an Alberson. I told her you were going to marry me.”
Henrietta put down her fork and looked at him squarely.
“But I told you I had a husband. You know I have a husband in Colorado. I told you so.”
“Of course. I remember that. I honor you for that, Henrietta. But of course it was all a lie. You have no husband in Colorado. Have you?” Henrietta tried to look into his eyes and say she had, but his eyes would not look into hers seriously. They twinkled mischievously and looked through her eyes into her heart. She drew a deep breath, like one drowning, and looked down.
“No,” she said. “I have no husband—in Colorado.”
CHAPTER XXII
Moses Shuder, having paid Saint Harvey of Riverbank his good money, went back to his own junkyard feeling high elation. The great ambition that had urged him ever since he had begun, a raw immigrant, was consummated. He was the mightiest Junk King of Riverbank. He need fear no paltry competition. He could put prices down and he could buy or refuse to buy, and he could put prices up, and no one would interfere. He saw himself the future great man of his people, bringing his downtrodden compatriots from Russia, sending them out upon the roads of free America to glean the waste metals and rags, setting them up in small trades, financing them, being a father to them. He had eliminated Harvey Redding.
But as he considered the transaction he began to worry. It is the duty of every man, in making a bargain, to make a good bargain—in fact, the best possible bargain—and Shuder began to fear he had not done that. Saint Harvey had accepted his offer almost too promptly.
His knowledge of values quieted this fear somewhat. The junk he had bought was worth more than he had paid for it, he knew, and the yard was worth more than one hundred dollars per year. Suddenly the awful thought came to him that, although he had paid Saint Harvey cash money, he had nothing to show for it. He had no “paper,” no receipt, no lease, nothing! Not even a witness! The cold perspiration oozed from his every pore. He had been cheated!
Moses Shuder, lying beside his soundly sleeping—and snoring—wife, squirmed with shame at the thought that he had been such a fool. He pulled at his beard angrily. So be it! He would find this Harvey Redding and make him give a paper. In the morning—
He suddenly sat bolt upright.
“Rosa, hush!” he whispered, putting his palm under her chin and closing her mouth.
“What is it, Moses? Fire? Thieves?”
“Hush! Thieves,” he whispered. He slid out of bed and drew on his trousers. From the lean-to where he kept his most precious junk—his copper and his lead—came the subdued clink of metal. Stealthily Shuder glided to his back door. He glided to the door of the lean-to.
“Thief! I got you!” he cried, and pounced upon Lem.
“You leave me alone! You let go of me!” the boy cried. But Shuder had him fast, and scolding in Yiddish he dragged the boy from the lean-to and into the shack.
Rosa lit the oil lamp.
“Sure!” panted Shuder. “Young Redink! Stealing chunk! Sure!”
Lem was in a panic. Fear, such as he had never experienced, cowed him. To the mind of youth the strange foreigner seems a thing to be jeered and hooted in the open day, but in the homes and churches and synagogues of the foreigners are believed to lurk strange mysteries; deep, unfathomable, blood-curdling, weird ways and doings, especially dire when wrought upon boys. Lem, in Shuder's grasp, did not see the poor shack with its grotesque furnishings rescued from purchases of offcast second-hand things. He did not see the tawdry intimate surroundings of a poor Jew struggling to wrest comfort and life from a none too friendly environment. Lem saw a perilous twilight in which might be worked strange tortures, awful incantations, black wizardry. Lem was scared stiff.
“Stealink!” said Shuder bitterly. The poor man was, indeed, almost in tears. His natural anger was all but lost in a feeling of hopelessness that he would ever be able to protect his property in this land of scorn.
“You should gif him by a policemans right avay,” said Rosa. “He should go to chail. Stealink at night!”
“Vait!” said Shuder, upraising his free hand. “Boy, vere is your fadder?”
“I don't know,” Lem whimpered. “How do I know where he is? He don't have to tell me, does he? You let me go, I tell you!”
“Should you tell me vere is your fadder, I let you go,” said Shuder. “Stop viggling. I don't hurt you. Why you steal my chunk?”
“I did n't steal it. I just took some.”
“Why?” Shuder insisted.
Lem looked up at the Jew.
“I won't tell,” he said.
“Then to chail!” said Shuder.
“Well—I wanted it,” said Lem reluctantly, and suddenly he broke down and began to ay. “I wanted to go to pop. I wanted to go to him. He said I could go where he is.”
“Rosa, hush!” said Shuder when his wife tried to speak again, and he began patiently, and with the little English he could command, to comfort Lem and let him know nothing dire was to happen to him.
Slowly, Lem's fear of some mysterious fate was lessened, and again and again he heard that Shuder, too, wished to find Saint Harvey. Not to harm him, Shuder assured Lem; only to get a “paper” that Saint Harvey had forgotten to leave. The importance of this paper to Shuder loomed vast as the Jew spoke of it again and again. In spite of his fear and hatred, Lem felt that the “paper” was something Shuder should not be robbed of—that it was some sort of Magna Charta of his life which Harvey had carried away by mistake.
“You won't get a policeman after me?” Lem begged.
“Sure, no! I gif you right by it. Sure, no!”
“Well, I ain't goin' to tell you. Pop he told me not to tell. But I can't help it if you go where I go, can I?”
“Nobody could,” said Shuder. “How could you?”
“Well, then, you let me go an' I'll go. I'll go right where he told me to, because that's what he said for me to do. And I can't help it if you follow me. Only you better get ready to walk a long ways, because it's sixty miles, I guess. Anyway, I guess it is.”
Shuder stroked his beard.
“Could a man go by the railroad?”
“Sure he could, if he had the money. Was n't that what I wanted some junk for—to sell it, so I could go on the train? But I have n't got any money. So I got to walk.”
“Mebby I should pay,” said Shuder.
Lem considered this.
“I guess that's all right,” he said, “if you want to. We'd get there sooner, anyway.”
Lem would not, however, tell where they were to go even then, and the next morning Shuder had to press close behind the boy at the ticket window to overhear him ask for a ticket to Burlington. He sat beside the boy all the way, too, never moving far from him even when they changed cars at the junction. At noon he fed Lem from the lunch Rosa had provided, and he bought Lem two apples from the train-boy. Shuder was close behind the boy when Lem asked at the post-office window for a letter for Lemuel Redding. Although he could not read, he peered over Lem's shoulder as Lem read the letter the clerk handed out.
“Pa ain't here no more,” said Lem, looking up at Shuder. “He's gone somewheres.”
Shuder grasped the letter from Lem's hand and stared at it, turning it over and over.
“Please, misder,” he begged of a man who passed, “you should read this to me.”
The man took the letter.
“Dear Lem,” he read. “I'm going on from here because the Jews have the junk business all tied up here from what I can see, and it's no place for me. No telling where I 'll land up at. You better go back to your Aunt Susan and wait until I send for you. Maybe it won't be as long as it looks like now.”
“And the name? The name?” cried Shuder. “Redding; it looks like Henry Redding, or something like that.”
“Well, I won't go back,” said Lem. “I don't care what he says. I won't go back to that old aunt. I don't care if I starve to death, I won't go back to her.”
Shuder had heard about Miss Susan on the way down from Riverbank, for Lem had been full of a sense of injustice and had had to talk to some one about it or burst. Lem and his troubles were none of Shuder's affair, but, on the other hand, Saint Harvey and the “paper” were, and Lem was Shuder's only link with Saint Harvey now.
“Do I ask you to go back by her, Lem'vel?” Shuder demanded. “No! But why should you vorry? Ain't I got two houses? Ain't I got two chunkyards? Ain't I got plenty room? I esk you, come by me awhile, Lem'vel.”
“Say, what you mean?” Lem asked. “You want me to go an' live at your house?”
“Sure!” said Shuder.
Lem looked at the Jew.
“All right,” he said. “Until I get a word from pop. I bet you don't have so many dishes to wash, anyway.”
Shuder raised a hand.
“Listen! Listen, Lem'vel!” he said solemnly. “I gif you my word you should n't wash even your face if you don't want to.”
“All right, I'll come,” said Lem.
CHAPTER XXIII
To his very considerable surprise, Lem did not find residing with the Shuders a painful experience. Rosa, for all her strange ways of doing things and her incomprehensible objection to chickens killed in any but a certain way, was a better cook than Saint Harvey, and knew how to prepare things that a boy's appetite found delicious. Lem had to sleep in the lean-to, on an old iron cot set among the piles of junk, but it was summer and hot and he enjoyed that.
Shuder made him work, but it was work that Lem liked; the kind he had always done for his father, and he had only about half as much of it to do as his father had made him do. He enjoyed helping with the horse, harnessing and unharnessing it. There was only one thing Lem refused to do—he would not go out of the junkyard. For a week he kept under close cover. Then, one night, he stole away, and, keeping in the alley shadows, made his way to Miss Susan's back gate. He did not risk the rusty hinges creaking, but climbed the fence, and dodged to the shadow of the house.
Miss Susan was in the kitchen. Lem went around the house. On the porch Lorna sat, on one of the steps as usual, and Henrietta and Johnnie Alberson had chairs. It was Henrietta Lem wanted. He seated himself under the drooping spirea bushes that edged the porch, and waited. Presently Lorna went up.
Lem heard a chair move on the porch and hoped Johnnie Alberson was going, but he was to have no such luck. He heard Johnnie speak.
“Henrietta,” he said, “when are we going to be married?”
“Never,” Henrietta answered, but not as if the question had offended her.
“But I'm not going to take that for an answer,” he said. “I can't. It would make a liar of me. I told Miss Susan I was going to marry you, and she rather depends on it, poor soul.”
“I told you, Johnnie, I have a husband. It is ridiculous, sinful, for you to talk to me of marrying.”
“I see! Which husband do you mean, Etta? The Colorado one who was and then was n't?”
“Oh! please don't!” Henrietta begged. “I can't tell you. Not now. Not yet. Perhaps never. I—”
“If you don't mean the Colorado myth,” said Johnnie, quite unabashed, “you must mean Freeman. Do you?”
There was a momentary silence.
“Yes, I do mean Freeman,” Henrietta said then. “How did you know he was my husband?”
“Well, you see,” said Johnnie slowly but wickedly, “he sold you to me. The night of the row about Lem stealing Miss Susan's money, Freeman came to my room after you had taken Lem, and we had a frank talk—quite a frank talk. So I bought you.”
“John!”
“Yes; I did. You cost me three hundred dollars, too—a lot of money to pay for a wife these days. You cost me two hundred—the money he stole from me—and another hundred in cold cash that I gave him to get away on. And my very best pants. That's three hundred dollars plus. So that settles that.”
“He is still my husband.”
“But not for long. He threw in a promise to that effect. I made him. He's getting a divorce now.”
“But he can't. I've always been more than faithful.”
“Yes, he can. You stole his trousers. That's grounds for the strongest kind of divorce. That's cruelty de luxe. So that's settled. When are you going to marry me?”
Henrietta, in spite of herself, laughed, but was serious again instantly.
“Never, John,” she said. “I'm not going to do any more marrying. I'm going to do penance for the marrying I have done in the past. If what you say is true and Freeman frees me, I—”
“What?”
“I want to take that poor Lem boy and make a good man of him. I want to do in Lem what I undid in Freeman. I want that to be my penance.” Johnnie laughed, and arose.
“All right! We'll leave it that way to-night. Good-night, Henrietta. You've some penance ahead of you, if I know that boy! Good-night.” Henrietta sat thinking after Johnnie was gone. She had many things she wished to let drift through her mind, trying each as it came up.
Johnnie Alberson first of all. If Freeman did get a divorce—
“Say!”
Henrietta, although seldom nervous, was startled by this voice coming from the bushes.
“Who is that?” she asked, her heart standing still for a moment. Her first thought was that it was Freeman returned.
“It's Lem,” the boy whispered. “Is he gone? Can I come out?”
“Oh, Lem! You did frighten me! Yes, come here. Where have you been? You poor child—”
“I ain't been anywhere,” Lem said. “I'm to Shuder's—to his junkyard. I'm junkin' for him an' he's keepin' me.”
“Shuder is? Who is Shuder?”
Lem came and stood by her side.
“He's the Jew. He's the one that pop could n't abide. He's all right, though, Shuder is. Say—”
“Yes?”
“You know my pop—well, he went away. So I went. But he was n't there. He said he'd send word to me when he was somewhere else—he said he'd send it here to Aunt Susan's house. But he did n't, did he?”
“No; I'm quite sure he has not.”
“Well, I guess he don't want me, anyhow,” said Lem. “I guess that's what's the matter. Only—”
“Yes, Lem?”
“If he does send word you'll let me know, won't you? Because I'll be down to Shuder's. You will, won't you? Only don't let that old thief aunt know where I am, will you? Because she'd jail me, darn her! She'd do that in a minute.”
“Lem,” said Henrietta, “would you like to be my boy?”
“Sure! I'd like it if I was. Only I ain't.”
“But if I could have you? You would like to be my boy, would n't you? And live with me? Not in this house; some other house.”
“What you going to do; buy me off of Aunt Susan?”
Henrietta laughed ruefully. If it came to that she was herself in pawn to Miss Sue.
“'Cause she's got first rights to me,” Lem said. “Unless pop gets me back from her. Say—”
“What, Lem?”
“I guess maybe pop ain't goin' to try very hard to get me back. I guess maybe he don't want to bother about it. I guess, if the Jews have got the upper hand of the junk business everywhere, pop'll go into the saint business somewhere again. So he won't want me then. So I guess, if he don't send me word pretty soon, I 'll go somewhere else. You know—where there ain't no old aunt that wants to jail me.”
“You mean run away, Lem?”
“Yes. I can get a job, I guess, junking. I don't mind Jews. They cook pretty good. They don't make you wash the dishes, anyway.” Henrietta put her arm around the boy, but he did not like it and squirmed, and she released him.
“How much does your father owe Miss Susan?” she asked.
“I don't know. A lot, I guess. Only he paid her some. He owes her what's left of what he owed her. Lots of money, I guess.”
“A hundred? Two hundred?”
“I guess so. I don't know.”
“Well, no matter. I'll let you know if any word comes from your father. But, promise me this, Lem—you won't run away until you let me know. I won't tell. Will you promise that?”
“Yes.”
“And come to me any time you want to. If you get into trouble, come to me. Any night or any day. I'll always sit here awhile after the others go. You'll do that—come to me if you are in trouble?”
“Yes.”
“Then you'd better go. It's very late.”
“All right.”
The boy dropped over the edge of the porch. For a minute or two longer Henrietta sat; then she went in.
CHAPTER XXIV
When Henrietta reached her room she lighted the gas and stood for many minutes before her mirror looking at her face as it was reflected there. It was thus she took stock of herself, trying to find and appraise the real Henrietta. The face she saw surprised her, for she had come to her room feeling that she was a wrecked and ruined Henrietta. She had half expected to see the face of a hag, lined with wrinkles of moral ugliness, with eyes of a slinking liar. She saw the face of a comely woman, younger by far than her actual years warranted. On the face were no lines whatever, either of age or sin. It was the frank face with the frank eyes of unsoiled innocence.
She bent nearer and studied her eyes. They looked back at her with no signs of deceitfulness. They were clear, steady, honest. Her troubles, her mistakes, her prevarications, had left no marks. She stood back, so that her full bust was reflected, and she tilted the mirror and stood away from it so that she saw all of her figure.
She had meant, if the mirror told her that, to accept the verdict that she was old, decaying, morally and physically vile. Instead she found herself to be all she had imagined she was not. From outward view she was lovely, and her eyes refused to tell her she was depraved.
Henrietta undressed slowly, pausing again and again to drop into periods of thoughtfulness, out of which she came slowly. She was trying to rearrange her life, as if she meant, before she slept, to draw an indelible line between the Henrietta she had been and the Henrietta she meant to be.
One thing she saw clearly. There must be restitution for the ill she had wrought Freeman; for she still held herself to blame for what he had become. This restitution—since there was no longer hope of Freeman—must be made vicariously to Lem.
There were other things she must do. The lies she had told must be untold. Then, too, Carter Bruce and Gay must be set right on love's path, for Gay still held eternal resentment against Carter. Johnnie Alberson must be turned away forever. If she could hold her school position another year, or perhaps two years, she must pay Miss Susan and Gay and Lorna, and reimburse Johnnie for Freeman's pilferings. It could all be done. She fell asleep finally resolved on all these things, and slept peacefully.
Lem, for his part, went back to his lean-to and his cot among the junk in the same mind as before. He did not worry much about what women said. When the time came, if he did not hear from his father, he would cut loose from River-bank.
Henrietta made it a point to see Johnnie Al-berson the next morning before he went to his drug store, and told him, as one saying the final, unalterable word, that she would never marry him. He received this sad information cheerfully.
“Did n't think you would,” he said. “Had n't the least hope of it.”
“I'm glad,” Henrietta said. “It makes it better when you feel so.”
“Oh, I've always felt that way,” he said jauntily. “I never expected you to marry me. I expected to marry you. And I still expect to. And I'm going to.”
He smiled at her.
“But, wait,” she said, “I tell you—”
“Did you ever know me to fail in anything I ever attempted?” he asked.
She said nothing.
“Well, I do, plenty of times,” he laughed, “but this is not one of them.”
“You'll find that it is one of them,” she said, meaning it, too, but he did not seem to worry about it.
Miss Susan, since her interview with Johnnie Alberson, had been exceedingly cold to Henrietta, merely tolerating her. Now, when Henrietta turned into the house, Miss Susan was waiting for her in the hall.
“Well, Henrietta,” she said, “I must say I'm thankful, it coming just at this time when, goodness knows! I'm hard enough put to it to make ends meet. And I will say I never expected to get it. So I'm thankful.”
She handed Henrietta two slips of paper. Henrietta stared at them with amazement, for one was a receipt “in full to date,” and the other a receipt, “for board, in advance, to October 8th.”
“I don't say I've figured it exactly right,” said Miss Susan, “but I 'll make right what ain't right. And as for Mr. Todder's receipt—”
“But why? What do you mean?” asked Henrietta. “Why are you giving me these?”
“I give because I'm asked to,” said Miss Susan a trifle tartly.
“But the money! I did not pay you any money.”
“Nor did you,” said Miss Susan, “although I might well suppose you knew it had been given. Mr. Alberson—”
Henrietta colored.
“Did he dare pay this?” she asked angrily.
“He dared hand it over, as he had been told to do and as it was his duty to do,” said Miss Susan. “It's infamous! He had no right—”
“Right or no right was not for him to say,” Miss Susan said. “When your own husband sent the money—”
“Freeman? Freeman sent money? That's nonsense! Freeman sent the money to Mr. Alberson? That's absurd!”
“Absurd or not absurd it was so sent,” said Miss Susan, “and I only hope he came by it honestly; but that is no concern of mine. Paid I am, to date and more than to date, and properly grateful, I must say.”
Henrietta folded the two receipts slowly.
“Very well!” she said.
She was furious, but she had no desire to quarrel over the matter with Miss Susan. She would let Johnnie Alberson know, however, that such things could not be done. It was, as she had said, infamous. It was effrontery such as she had never imagined possible. She longed to rush to Johnnie's shop immediately and tell him so. Of course, however, that would not do. She must wait until he came.
She was interrupted by Gay and Lorna, who came down the stairs.
“Going for a walk,” Gay said. “Put on a hat and come, Henrietta.”
Henrietta slipped the receipts into her waist and took her hat from the hall rack. A walk with Gay and Lorna just then suited her well. They went up the hill, and turned, going toward the country.
“I want to tell you something,” she said, when they were striding along the country road. “There is no William Vane. I lied about him. I made him up.”
Gay laughed.
“Of course. We knew that, Henrietta.”
“I suppose so. I was clumsy—toward the last. I was worried. About Freeman.”
Gay closed her lips firmly.
“Freeman is my husband,” said Henrietta.
For a full minute Gay said nothing.
“Is that another lie?” she asked then, but her voice was choked.
“I deserve that,” said Henrietta. “No, it is not a lie. It is the full truth. Freeman is my husband. He is also a thief. He stole from Johnnie Alberson. That is why he fled. So, you see, we are a nice couple—a thief and a liar.”
Strangely enough, Lorna put her arm around Henrietta's waist. Gay stopped short. The next moment she was at the side of the road, sunk down upon the grass, her face buried in her arms, sobbing. Lorna went to her, and Henrietta stood before her.
“He is not worth it,” she said, meaning Gay's tears.
“Oh, I know! I know!” Gay wept. “It's not that. I don't know what it is. I did n't like him. I hated him. I knew he was bad. I don't know what's the matter. I'm just so miserable! I'm so wicked; so mean!”
“Don't cry; don't cry, Gay,” Lorna was begging.
“Well, I can't help it. I've been so mean to him; to Car—to Carter. And he loves—he loves me so. He's so good and—and good and—and I've been so—”
“Hush! It will be all right, Gay,” Lorna comforted. “Stop now. Pretend you've not been crying, anyway; here comes a farmer.”
Gay wiped her eyes and looked down the road. Up the hill a rig was coming slowly, one flat wheel thumping the road with a rattle of loose tire at each revolution, while it, or another wheel, screeched nerve-rackingly. In the shafts was an aged gray horse that stopped now and then to swish its tail and turn its head in an attempt to bite a horsefly on its withers. In the cart sat a fat man, a very fat man, and he objurgated the old horse vociferously.
“Dod-baste you!” he cried. “Get along there. Giddap! Go on! Dod-baste you, you're enough to make a saint swear, you old lummox, you!”
Saint Harvey of Riverbank was returning from his travels.
CHAPTER XXV
That noon Henrietta hurried across the road to the Bruce mansion and found Judge Bruce on the porch, wiping his face and resting, after his walk up the hill, before going in for his midday meal.
“Carter here?” she asked rather breathlessly.
“Why, no, he ain't,” said the old Judge. “Set down, won't you, Henrietta? Hot day. No, Carter ain't home. He's gone on a trip. Out to Nevada or somewhere. Some sort of business Johnnie Alberson sent him off on. Wasn't nothing I'd do as well at, was it?”
It was not.
“Johnnie Alberson sent him?” exclaimed Henrietta.
“That's right,” said the Judge. “Looks sort of suspicious to me,” he added with a twinkle. “Ain't ever heard of Johnnie having a wife, have you? Nevada's where folks go to get rid of them entangling alliances, I've heard tell.”
Henrietta looked at him acutely.
“He didn't say why he was going? Carter did n't?” she asked.
“He might have, and then again he might n't have,” said the Judge. “No use pumpin' me, Henrietta. Us law folks can't be pumped.”
He waited and then asked:
“Heard from that Freeman Todder boarder of Miss Susan's lately?”
Henrietta studied the old man's face.
“You won't tell me anything?” she asked.
“Not a mite,” said the Judge. “Ain't no use askin' it,” and he chuckled.
Henrietta put her hand to her cheek, so hot was the cheek that it was like flame to her hand. She turned from the Judge and saw Johnnie Al-berson coming up the hill, as jaunty and unconcerned as if the day was not broiling hot.
“Oh!” wailed Henrietta, and she sped down and across the street and intercepted the obnoxious druggist. He received her with a smile.
“Hot day,” he said genially.
Henrietta brushed this aside.
“Did you send Carter Bruce West? To attend to my divorce? Did you dare interfere to that extent in my affairs? Did you?” she demanded.
“Bruce? Carter Bruce?” said Johnnie. “Why, yes, come to think of it, I did send him West on some sort of a divorce business. You see, I thought such things went better when personally conducted—”
“I don't care what you think! Did you dare to pay my bill to Miss Susan? Did you dare do that?”
“Oh! was that your bill I paid?” asked Johnnie. “I did pay some board bill. I do remember that now.”
“I won't have it!” declared Henrietta. “It's monstrous! It's outrageous. I never heard of such unwarranted—”
“Neither did I,” said Johnnie. “I'd be ashamed of myself—if I was ashamed.” And then, seriously, “But why shouldn't I? Two months from now it would be all right—when we are married. What are two months? Sixty days!”
“I've told you I'm not going to marry you. That I meant; and, more than ever, I mean it now. You have insulted me beyond measure.”
“Yes; awfully,” said Johnnie. “And that isn't all. I've cancelled what your Freeman took from me. I'm a cave man. I'm dubbing you with a modern club. I'm getting you in my villainous toils.”
“It is not a thing to be jocular about,” said Henrietta. “I will not have it!”
“All right,” said Johnnie cheerfully. “What are you going to do not to have it? Look, Henrietta; why be so obstinate? Don't you like me?”
“I will not have it!” she could only repeat.
“That's not what bothers me,” said Johnnie. “What I want to know is whether you will have me?”
“I will not have you!” said Henrietta. “I'll never marry any man! Least of all you—after this.”
“You'll just take Lem and go off and be a grandmother to him,” said Johnnie. “That's nice. Well—it's almost too hot to eat, isn't it?”
What could be done with such a man? There was nothing Henrietta could do. She had no money to repay what he had paid Miss Susan, and she did not know where Freeman had gone. Nevada might mean Reno, but old Judge Bruce was no fool, and Nevada might not even mean Nevada—probably did not. She stopped short where she stood. Johnnie tipped his hat politely and went on.
Later that day Henrietta sat in the cool parlor of the boarding-house trying to think what to do. She had gone over her slender assets and had found them all too scant to permit her to leave Riverbank, taking Lem or not taking him. To her came Miss Susan bearing a soiled envelope.
“A boy fetched this. He said there was n't any answer,” Miss Susan said. “He was that Swatty boy, and I gave him a good piece of my mind about thieving, while I had the chance.”
Henrietta tore open the envelope.
The note was from Harvey Redding. It asked her to come, if she could, to see him, at the junkyard of Moses Shuder. “About Lemuel,” the note said. Henrietta went.
She found the late saint in the junkyard tossing old iron into Shuder's wagon.
“I would n't have asked you to come here,” Harvey said, wiping his face, which was streaked with perspiration and rust, “only on account of Lem yonder. Lem's scared. Lem's afraid, now that I've come back, his aunt'll get word that I'm back an' come an' fetch him an' jail him. He's mortal afraid of that aunt, Lem is. Don't know as I blame him so dod-basted much, either. I'm sort of scared of her myself.”
“No reason, Mr. Redding,” Henrietta said. “She's cross—sometimes—but her heart is kind.”
“Lem don't feel so,” said Harvey. “Seems like she's dead set against Lem. Well, what I asked you to come for—seein' how I was scared to go up to Susan's house—was about somethin' Lem said about you wantin' to have him. I don't know but I'm willin'—”
“But don't you want him yourself?” asked Henrietta with a leap of her heart.
“I might want him, dod-baste it,” said Harvey, “but I ain't got him. She's got him. I pawned him to her, an' since I've went into pardnership with this here Shuder—”
“What?”
“Well, he ain't so dod-basted bad, at that, when you come to know him,” said Harvey. “He is sort of set against ham, but if other food is plenty I can git along. An' the dicker I made with him, as I was sayin', is goin' to take all my spare cash for quite a while. I guess him an' me, when we git things goin' right, is goin' to con-troll the junk business of this town, an' no mistake. We got a good combination in him an' me. He's a hard worker an' me—I've got the brains.”
“But about Lem?”
“Well, that's it. Accordin' to these here terms of pardnership I'm goin' to have to put in all the spare cash I can get for quite some time, an' it looks like it would be years before I could git Lem out o' pawn, an' he does hate dod-bastedly to be pawned to his Aunt Susan, he does. So if you want to unpawn him an' git him pawned to you, I ain't got no objections.”
“And you, Lem?” asked Henrietta. “Would you rather be pawned to me?”
“I bet you!” the boy said eagerly. “I'd like it.”
“I don't know! I 'll see what I can do,” Henrietta said. “I would love to have him. It is the greatest—the only desire of my heart.”
She went straight to Miss Susan when she reached the house.
“Well, I don't know,” Miss Susan said when
Henrietta had made her proposition, which was to take Lem out of pawn and pay Miss Susan the amount of Harvey's note a little at a time. “I won't tell a lie for nobody, not even to keep up a spite. Lem's been a sore trial to me, and I guess I ain't made to have boys around me. And there was a time when I thought you was the nicest woman I'd ever met. You've got a way with you that makes folks like you. Often and often I 've wished I had time from my work so I could fix myself up and set on the porch with you and get real friendly with you. Mebby you won't know what I mean, Henrietta, but many a time I've wished I had time to get the grease off me and be so I could put my arm around you, like Lorna and Gay does. That's the sort of way you've got about you. I ain't ashamed to say there's been times I'd have given a lot if I could have kissed you.”
“Yes, I know,” said Henrietta. “I know the feeling.”
“Mebby so,” said Susan, “but if so I guess you never had it when you was thinkin' of me. Nor I ain't ever had it toward no other woman—or man—not even my ma, as far as I can remember; she was such a fretty, naggish creature, poor soul!”
Miss Susan wiped an eye, furtively.
“I had an aunt once that made doughnuts and smelled of pink soap,” she went on. “The way I felt to her was the nearest like what I felt toward you. I don't know what to call it, unless it's like thoughts of a cool grave on a hot Sunday mornin' in church after a hard week's work. Henrietta, you're so comfortable! There just ain't no vinegar in you!”
“There is in you, Susan,” Henrietta said. “Do you know how much?”
“Aplenty!”
“Just about one drop to a gallon of goodness,” said Henrietta gayly. “A pint is a pound, is n't it? There must be about a hundred and sixty pints of you, Susan, and not over one pint is vinegar. Only you do let it all come to the top—you certainly do! And you are getting more and more vinegary.”
“I have my trials.”
“The trouble with both of us is that we're failures, and we are beginning to get old and it hurts,” said Henrietta. “You were going to send me away, when I had n't a cent in the world, but that would not hurt me as much as it hurt you. Such things would turn three more pints of Susan into vinegar. And you 'll nag Lem, and there will be three more pints of vinegared Susan. Do you know what I've noticed, Susan?”
“What?”
“I'm like soda to you. When you're sour a good spoonful of me makes you fizz and boil, but when you finish fizzing and boiling you are as sweet as honey. I take the sour out of your vinegar.”
“Yes, you do so,” said Susan, sighing. “That's why it is so hard on me to have to not like you. I wish you was a different sort of woman.”
“I am!” said Henrietta eagerly. “I am, and I mean to be. Try me! Let me have Lem!”
“Well, I'll think it over,” said Miss Susan. Henrietta was happier than she had been for years. She went from Miss Susan happily. If she could have Lem she would have a life-work—an opportunity to redeem what she had done in harm to Freeman, and she would have a shield against Johnnie Alberson, too. Twice that afternoon she spoke to Miss Susan.
“I ain't had time to think it over,” Miss Susan told her the first time. The second time Miss Susan said, “Well, I'm inclined. I'm more for than against, but I ain't quite sure yet. It looks like I would be.”
For Gay and Carter Bruce Henrietta had no more fears. She was even able to treat Johnnie Alberson with haughty calm when he came home that evening. At supper she questioned Miss Susan with her eyes as that tired but tireless woman waited on the table.
“I'm goin' to say 'yes,' if I don't change my mind,” Miss Susan whispered. “You see me before I go to bed.”
Henrietta was as happy as a young girl that evening, for she felt sure Miss Susan would give up Lem. She carefully avoided Johnnie Alberson, doing so by putting her arm around Lorna's waist and going across to Gay's. What might happen to Johnnie Alberson she did not care at that moment.
“Henrietta,” Lorna said, as they crossed the street, “do you know that Gay has had a letter from Carter Bruce? Carter says he is superintending a divorce. Do you know whose?”
“Freeman's,” Henrietta answered. “Yes, I knew that, Lorna.”
“Bruce writes that it is settled—that it is all arranged but the simple final details. Henrietta—”
“Yes?”
“You don't tell me anything about this love affair. Is Johnnie Alberson—has he—I mean—”
“He has asked me to marry him, if that is what you mean, Lorna,” Henrietta said, “but if you mean you want to know whether I am going to marry him or not, I'm not. I'm not going to marry any one. I'm going to have Lem. I'm going to make Miss Susan give me Lem, and I'm going to live with Miss Susan, and we will all be as happy as the day is long.”
“I think Johnnie likes you awfully well,” Lorna ventured.
Henrietta gave Lorna's waist a little squeeze. “I know he does,” she admitted cheerfully, “but I'm Lem's, and Lem is going to be mine.” They found Gay in a tremble of happiness, for Carter Bruce had written other things in his letter than the mere report that Freeman would surely have his divorce in a few days. It was almost an hour later when Henrietta arose from her seat on Gay's porch and peered across the street.
“Who is that?” she asked. “Isn't that Lem and his father going up Miss Susan's steps? It is! Good-bye, Gay!”
She overtook the panting ex-saint before he reached Miss Susan's front door.
“Oh, Mr. Redding!” she exclaimed. “I know you've come to see your sister. Here—this is the easiest chair. You must be so tired. I 'll tell her you're here. You want a fan, I know.”
“Well, 'tis dod-basted hot,” said Harvey, taking the proffered fan. “It's hot enough to make a saint swear, if I was one, which I ain't. No, mam; never again! Saintin' ain't in my line—not as a regular job. I don't say that maybe I won't do a little at it off an' on, times when the junk business gets a mite slack, but I don't figger to go at it regular again. The way I figger it out is that bein' a saint is too easy for a big, strong man like me. Yes, mam, too easy. I may take a whack at it once in a while as a sort of amusement—”
It was evident that Harvey did not mean to use the chair Henrietta had drawn forward for him, and a great fear came to her that he would reach Miss Susan and reclaim Lem. She pushed past him into the hall, and locked the screen door, saying, “I 'll tell Miss Susan you are here,” as she fled.
She threw open the kitchen door and stopped short. Miss Susan sat in her lone kitchen chair, and before her, seated on the edge of the table, was Johnnie Alberson.
“Oh!” Henrietta ejaculated, “I didn't know—”
“Wait!” said Miss Susan as Henrietta was about to go. “I'd as well say it now as any time, Henrietta. I can't let you have Lem.”
Johnnie Alberson carefully smoothed the cloth over his well-rounded knee. He caught Henrietta's eye and smiled at her.
“Cave-man business, Henrietta,” he said.
“What do you mean? Has Mr. Alberson been telling you I am not fit to have—” Henrietta began.
“Well, I'm sure I hate to disappoint you,” Miss Susan interrupted, “but an Alberson is an Alberson, and cash money is cash money. Lem ain't pawned to me any more; he's pawned to Mr. Alberson. Mr. Alberson paid me what Brother Harvey owes me and Lem's his.”
“Is this true?” Henrietta demanded. She felt she should be furiously angry, but for some reason she was not. Her heart, instead of pumping angry blood to her cheeks, leaped joyously, but she tried to put indignation in her voice. “Lem's mine,” said Johnnie.
“I thought maybe you would n't mind, Henrietta,” said Miss Susan, “seeing as how Johnnie tells me you and him are going to be married almost right away.”
“Cave-man business, Henrietta,” Johnnie repeated. “You see it's no use trying to fight me. I'm a rough one. I always have my way. An Alberson is an Alberson.”
“But you can't do this thing!” Henrietta exclaimed. She would not be driven in this way. “You cannot hand a child around as if he was a chattel, passing him from one to another. There is such a thing as the law, and there are a father's rights. A child cannot be pawned. I'll see his father. I'll—”
Harvey Redding, waving his palm-leaf fan, opened the door that led from the kitchen garden and came into the kitchen. Miss Susan turned her head.
“Umph!” she said scornfully. “It's about time you showed up, I expect. A nice sort of a saint you are, ain't you? A pretty saint you are, runnin' off no one knows where to, and—”
“Now, Susan,” said Harvey pleadingly, “I ain't no saint no more—”
“And leaving your son to be passed back and forth—”
“Now, you hold on!” said Harvey. “Don't you go tongue-lashin' me that way. I said I was n't no saint, an' I ain't, an' I'm liable to say what I feel like if you get me mad. You don't understand the first principles of bein' a saint, Susan Redding, an' you've got no right to criticize one. I've been one, an' I know. You're a nice one to talk about Lem, when all the time I've been wearin' my brain to a frazzle tryin' to figger out what would be best for him, goin' an' mortifying my flesh so I could be a saint an' he could be proud of me, an' goin' into the junk business an' out of it an' into it again. Don't you talk about saints! Why, dod-baste it, Susan! I'm more of a saint now that I ain't one than I was when I was one. Ain't I brought you the money right now to redeem Lem back?”
“You brought the money?”
Harvey tossed it into his sister's lap with a grand gesture.
“Money!” he puffed. “Count it! Ain't I brought it to you? An' ain't I gone an' give up my only son to Mr. Alberson here to keep forever, tearin' my feelin's to pieces for Lem's good so that boy could be raised up an Alberson? Ain't I signed a paper so that Mr. Alberson here can adopt Lem? An' you say I'm a nice sort of saint! Dod-baste it, I ain't either a nice sort of saint!”
Henrietta's face did redden now.
“Are you going to do that?” she asked Johnnie. “Are you going to adopt Lem?”
“Cave-man business,” said Johnnie, grinning at her fondly. “If Lem is willing I'm going to adopt him.”
“I 'll fetch him. There ain't no time like the present to get things settled,” said Miss Susan. While she was gone, the three stood silent, Johnnie still smiling at Henrietta. Harvey was the first to move. His roving eyes caught sight of a ham, partially demolished, on a platter on the table, and he moved toward it and cut a thick, unsaintly slice and laid it on a slice of bread.
“Lem likes ham,” he said. “You give Lem plenty of ham and you won't have no trouble with him. He takes after me that way.”
“Is that so, Lem?” asked Johnnie, as Lem appeared in the doorway, rubbing his sleepy eyes with one hand and trying to hold a coat around his waist with the other. “Do you like ham?”
“I guess so,” the boy said. “I mean, yes, sir, I do.”
“Then that's all right,” said Johnnie. “You shall have lots of ham. Lem, how would you like me for a father?”
Lem looked towards his parent but Harvey's back was still turned.
“I'd like you all right, I guess,” said Lem.
“Fine!” said Johnnie. “That's good, you see, because I 'm going to be your father from now on. And how would you like Miss Henrietta for a mother?”
“I'd like that fine!” said Lem, and he let his hand fall to Henrietta's hand and grasped it. “I'd like that bully!”
He looked up at Henrietta.
“Are you goin' to be?” he asked wistfully. “I wish you would be; are you?”
Somehow Johnnie Alberson was kneeling at the other side of the boy then, and when his arm went around Lem it went around Henrietta too. “Are you, Henrietta?” Johnnie asked.
“Oh, yes—yes!” said Henrietta. “I am, Lem, because I love you,” and then, much lower, she added, “and Johnnie.”
Miss Susan wiped her eyes on the edge of her apron.
Harvey, too, seemed to be affected, for he kept his back turned on the little group by the door; but what he said was:
“Well, I got quite a long walk ahead of me, so I guess I 'll just slice off another slice o' ham to sort o' eat on the way down. I don't never seem able to get my fill o' ham since I was a saint.”
THE END