“I don’t like a thief,” said Susan grimly.
“But Lem is not that,” Henrietta urged. “All boys do what he did – most boys – if they have the chance. They mean no wrong, I know.”
“They don’t do things like that and stay in my house,” Susan said.
“But Lem is such a dear boy – ”
“He’d have to be a whole sight dearer before I’d ever want a thief in my house,” Susan interrupted. “I’ll let him stay to-night, but tomorrow back he goes to his worthless parent, money or no money.”
It was evident her dislike was still keen, and Henrietta knew it would never do for his aunt to discover he had decamped, even temporarily, by the window. Lem might not return, but if he did Miss Susan must not know he had ever fled. That, she was sure, Susan would never forgive.
“Let me go up to him, Miss Susan,” she begged. “You’re tired and it makes you cross, and I love Lem.”
Miss Susan was willing, and Henrietta went up to the empty room. When she came down she said there was nothing the matter with Lem now, as far as she could see, which was, in a way, true enough, for she had looked out of his window and could not see him at all.
The evening was pleasant. Gay, who had come across the street, and Lorna and Freeman were already on the porch. As Henrietta went out to them, Carter Bruce came up the walk. Gay was on the step, with Freeman at her side, and they were talking in low tones. Bruce hailed every one and stopped in front of Freeman.
“I hear you are going to leave us,” he said. “First I’ve heard it,” said Todder lightly. “Where did you get that?”
“I got it straight,” Carter said. “I hear you ‘re going to leave Riverbank the first of the week.”
“Nothing in it,” said Todder carelessly. “Why leave Riverbank where the fairest girls are? Must have meant some other fellow, Bruce.”
“No. You’re the man. I’m not mistaken,” Bruce said.
Henrietta leaned forward in her chair. “Stuff!” Freeman laughed carelessly. “Why should I want to leave Riverbank?”
“Come here a minute and I’ll tell you what I heard,” said Bruce, keeping to the tone of inoffensive friendliness.
Todder arose and walked a few yards away with Carter Bruce.
“Excuse the secretive males,” Bruce called; and then his tone changed, as he spoke to Todder. “You are going to leave because you have a wife you ought to be looking after, instead of making up to some of the girls here. I’ve got this straight, understand? So you get out of town before the first of next week or there’ll be trouble.”
Todder felt in his pocket for a cigarette.
“Got a wife I ought to be looking after, have I?” he said. “That’s glad tidings. Nothing like having a wife. Now, where is this wife of mine?” He did not know how much Carter Bruce knew, or how he had learned what he did know, but he felt fairly positive that Bruce did not know much or he would not have suggested that he ought to be looking after his wife. Henrietta was his wife, and he was, all things considered, fairly close to her even at that moment. “Just where is this wife of mine, Bruce? I’m interested. That’s proper, is n’t it? A man ought to be interested in his wife.”
“You know where she is,” Bruce said.
“That means you don’t,” said Freeman, suddenly taking the offensive. “That means somebody has been lying to you or you have been overworking your imagination. Where is this wife of mine?”
Carter smiled. He had played for this. He watched Freeman Todder’s face, to see the sneering smile die when he spoke.
“Your wife,” he said slowly, “is in Colorado.” The effect on Freeman Todder was not at all what Bruce had expected. Instead of cringing he shouted a laugh. He even clapped Bruce on the shoulder.
“You’ve got me all wrong, Bruce,” he said. “I know what’s the matter with you – you’re jealous. You’re gone on Gay yonder and you’re sore because you think I’m cutting you out. Well, don’t go spreading any of these ‘you’re married’ lies about me in our beautiful little city, understand? I won’t stand that.”
Bruce said nothing. It was evident there was something wrong with his information. He had no reason to doubt that Henrietta believed what she had told him, but something was wrong somewhere. He had tried to “throw a scare” into Todder and the scare had not worked as he had expected. He blamed himself, a lawyer, even if a young one, for having attempted a bluff before he had his evidence in proper shape to back his bluff, but he felt reasonably sure that when he had had another talk with Henrietta he would have the facts so completely in hand that he would be more successful.
Todder lighted his cigarette. This, in Iowa at that date, was in itself equivalent to a show of bravado, for the cigarette was a sign of deep depravity, so much so that the Riverbank audiences were never quite sure the “vilyun” on the stage was actually a villain until he had lighted a “coffin nail.” Even Simon Legree, in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had to come to it, and if Uncle Tom had put match to a cigarette he would have lost the sympathy and gained the hatred of all respectable citizens. By lighting a cigarette Freeman Todder was, in a way, flaunting his devilishness in the face of his rival.
“Your jealousy has given you wheels in the head, that’s what’s the matter with you, Bruce,” Todder said carelessly. “If you want to get the real inside information about my wife affairs, past, present, or to be, I ‘ll give it to you straight. The only wife I ever expect to have is sitting on that porch. There you have it and you can do what you please with it. You can stand here if you want to; I’m going back and talk to Gay.” Bruce walked back at his side.
“I seem to have been mistaken,” he said in the tone he would have used had he believed he was mistaken, and in a few minutes the incident seemed to be forgotten.
Henrietta, however, was greatly disturbed. She could not guess what had passed between the two men nor how much Bruce had told or Todder guessed. She was, for the moment, exceedingly unhappy. She looked at Freeman closely, trying to judge what had been said, but his face offered no information.
If anything Bruce had said so acted on Freeman that the latter tried to leave town, the very worst was apt to happen. Johnnie Alberson, thinking he had been played a trick, would in all probability have Freeman arrested. That would very promptly end everything. Henrietta drew her chair far back in the shadow of the porch and sat silent, trying to plan something when there was in fact nothing that could be planned until she had spoken with Freeman. She had closed her eyes, trying to think, when she heard Lorna say, “Who’s that?”
Henrietta peered into the dusk and saw a plump, jaunty figure coming up the walk toward the house.
“It’s Johnnie Alberson,” Freeman answered Lorna.
It was Johnnie Alberson. He came to the porch smiling and swinging his light cane, his straw hat in his hand.
“Hello! quite a party,” he said. “Won’t anybody offer a fat, old man a seat?”
He walked between Lorna and Gay, up the steps, and peered into the shadows of the porch.
“Is that you, Miss Redding?” he asked.
Henrietta had hoped she would not be seen. At that moment there was no one she less wished to see than Johnnie Alberson.
“No, this is Miss Bates,” she said; and Johnnie, excusing himself for making the mistake, went to her end of the porch and took the chair at her side. He was pleased, because he had hoped to find her there. It had been a thought of Henrietta that had sent him tramping up the long hill. He had, after Henrietta’s visit to the drug store, thought of Henrietta quite a little and he had decided that – unless his memory deceived him – she was just about the finest woman he had ever seen; that she was the sort of woman with whom he would enjoy a flirtation, let it go as far as it might.
“Like meeting an old friend,” he said, putting his hat carefully on the floor. “And I hope we’ll be better friends. Mother has gone to Dubuque to spend a couple of weeks and I’m going to ask Miss Redding to take me in, if she has room.”
“That will be nice,” said Henrietta warmly, but she felt that the coming of Johnnie was almost too much.
CHAPTER XIV
The evening proved more satisfactory than Henrietta had feared. Carter Bruce did not leave Gay to Freeman, but seemed to have taken Henrietta’s warning thoroughly to heart. It is true that Freeman tried to monopolize Gay, rather driving Carter to Lorna, but Carter would not be wholly driven and managed to make it a party of four on the steps, talking across Lorna at Gay.
Neither was Johnnie Alberson as fearsome as Henrietta had feared. If he meant to press his attentions on her – and he certainly did mean to – he was too wise to begin too violently. Flirtation was a game with Johnnie and one in which he was an experienced hand. When, about eleven, he said good-night, Henrietta had spent one of the pleasantest evenings of her life. She settled herself in her chair again, listening to the four younger people on the steps, to the crickets in the grass, and to the thumping of Miss Susan’s iron in the kitchen.
Carter, when Gay finally arose, went with her, and Henrietta was pleased to see that he took her arm and that she did not object to this slight attention.
“Going up, Lorna?” Henrietta asked, meaning the question more as a hint to Freeman, for she wanted to talk with him, but he did not take the hint and sat on the step smoking when they went in.
It was an hour later – fully midnight – when Miss Susan laid aside her irons and went to her room. The house was silent, for Freeman had gone to his room half an hour before and Miss Susan climbed the stairs wearily. She was so tired that when she reached her room she sat on the edge of her bed, almost too tired to bend to undo her shoe-laces, and suddenly her eyes fell on her purse, which she had left on her dresser. It was wide open.
Miss Susan crossed the room and took the purse in her hand. It was empty. For a minute she stood looking into it and then she opened her door and went into the hall.
The purse had not contained much money – eleven or twelve dollars, if she remembered rightly – but that was gone. At Lem’s door she paused, listening, for she heard subdued noises within the room. She opened the door suddenly.
The boy stood in the full moonlight, fully dressed and his ragged straw hat on his head, just as he had come in from his visit to his father. He turned as the door opened and the next moment Miss Susan had him by the collar. He tried to pull away toward the window, but she held him fast and he fell and was on his feet again in an instant, kicking and striking. Miss Susan held tight to the collar.
The small stand holding the ewer and basin toppled and fell with a crashing of queensware, and almost before the noise ceased Lorna and Henrietta were at the door. A minute later Freeman came, and Lorna fled, being too lightly clad.
“Grab him! Grab the little rat!” Susan cried, and Freeman clasped the boy from behind, slipping his hands under his arms, and spreading his own feet wide apart to escape the kicks the sobbingly angry boy dealt with his bare heels.
“You leave me alone,” Lem sobbed, doubling his kicks and jerking to set himself free. Miss Susan, as Freeman tightened his grip, felt in the boy’s pockets, bringing forth a silver dollar, but no more.
“Lem! Lem, dear!”
The boy looked up. Henrietta was standing in the doorway, her voice commanding but soothing. In the instant before Freeman or Susan could turn their heads toward her, she closed her eyes and stiffened her body. At the moment Lem was too angry to heed her, but, in another moment, he felt that his struggles were useless, and he grasped what she meant. Suddenly he grew white and rigid and lay in Freeman’s arms, stiffly inert.
“I was afraid of that! I was afraid of that!” Henrietta said, and she went to take Lem from Freeman.
Miss Susan, one hand comforting the side of her face where one of Lem’s blows had fallen, scowled at the boy.
“The thief!” she exclaimed angrily. “The miserable, low, thieving brat! He robbed my purse. I ‘ll show him! I ‘ll see that he gets what he deserves now! Fit or no fit he does not stay in my house another hour.”
Henrietta paid no attention to her. Lorna was at the door now, a robe thrown around her.
“What was it?” she asked. “What did he do?”
“He stole from me,” said Miss Susan. “He robbed my purse. And out he goes!”
“But not to-night,” said Henrietta, braving her. “Not while he is like this.”
She tried to lift him, but he was too heavy. “Take him, Freeman,” she said.
Freeman lifted the boy and turned toward the bed.
“Not there,” said Henrietta. “In my room. He is not wanted here, but my room is my own. To-morrow, if Miss Redding wishes, Lem and I will go. Come, Freeman.”
CHAPTER XV
Before Freeman had placed Lem on Henrietta’s bed, Henrietta had her door closed and locked. She stood with her back to the door, facing Freeman when he turned. She had several things she wanted to say to him. She had not the slightest doubt that he had taken Miss Susan’s money and there were other things she wished to talk over with him. Her position was becoming more and more difficult each hour.
What she meant to say she did not know, and neither did she know what she meant to do when all was said. One thing seemed to her particularly monstrous – that Lem should be held guilty for a theft he had not committed – and in her present state of mind she was ready to sacrifice both Freeman and herself to save Lem. Her own life, and Freeman’s, seemed already ruined, and as she stood there she was resolved that before Freeman left the room everything must be decided.
Freeman, as he turned, looked at her. He knew by the look on her face and the light in her eyes that she had been driven beyond all patience by this last act of his.
“What do you want?” he asked, moving away from the bed.
“To talk with you,” Henrietta said. “I am through. This is the end, of course.”
“A nice little family chat, I suppose,” he sneered. “Door locked, hubby captured, wifey angry. Act 3, Scene 2. Villain husband lights cigarette.”
He took his pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook one out, knocking it on the back of his hand before he lighted it.
“Wife glares at husband,” he continued, in the same tone. “Husband nonchalantly crosses stage to chair.”
He walked toward the chair that stood by Henrietta’s window.
“And exit husband,” he said, raising the wire screen of the window and stepping out upon the tin roof of the porch. Henrietta leaped forward, but only in time to hear the crackling of the tin as Freeman crossed to his own window. She heard his screen clatter down, and the creak of his window as he lowered it, and even the grating of the safety lock as he quite satisfactorily locked himself in.
For a moment Henrietta looked at her window; then she turned to Lem.
“Lem!” she commanded. “Lem, wake up!” The boy did not stir.
“Lem!” she said. “Wake up. I know you are only pretending. Stop this fooling; I want to talk to you.”
But Lem would not waken. She tried other ways, talking to him all the while, tickling the tough soles of his bare feet and opening his eyelids, but he was not to be coaxed or driven out of the pretended fit.
“Very well, then,” Henrietta said, seating herself on the bedside. “I’ll talk to you, anyway, for I know you hear me. I know you did not steal Miss Susan’s money, but she will never believe that. I know Freeman stole it.”
Lem lay as inert as a corpse. If he heard he gave no sign.
“Listen, Lem,” Henrietta continued. “What I want to tell you is that you must not run away, if you were thinking of running away. That was why I had you brought here, so I could tell you that. You understand, don’t you? You must not run away; not to-night, anyway.”
There was still no sign from the boy on the bed. “I ‘ll tell you why,” Henrietta went on. “If you do, every one will always think you are a thief, and all your life you will have trouble and misery and unhappiness. All your whole life, even if you live to be a hundred. So I want you to promise not to run away to-night. Will you promise that?”
Lem did not answer.
“I wish you would,” pleaded Henrietta. “I’m tired, Lem, and my heart is tired to-night. I want to sleep and see if sleep will bring me any answer to the troubles I can’t see my way out of to-night. There may be some way, but I do not see it now, and if you will not promise not to run away I ‘ll have to go to Miss Susan now and tell her that Freeman stole her money. I want to save you, Lem, but I want to save myself and Freeman, too, if I can, and if I tell Miss Susan the truth it means ruin for me. I will have to go away forever. Will you promise now not to run away?”
She looked at him, but not a muscle of his face quivered. She arose, and drew her robe more closely around her neck, and went to the door. There she gave a last look toward the bed. Lem was sitting straight.
“Aw, gee!” he said. “Don’t go an’ tell her nothin’ like that. Don’t you go an’ tell her Freeman took her money. Because he didn’t take it. I took it.”
“Lem!” Henrietta cried, with a deep breath, while her eyes showed her distress. “Not truly? You don’t mean that, Lem?”
“Yes, I did!” he insisted. “I took it. I took it, but I did n’t steal it. I took it to get even with her, callin’ me a thief an’ everything.” Henrietta returned to sit on the edge of the bed.
“Oh, Lem!” she said. “How could you!”
“Well, she was mean to me, so I was mean to her,” he said. “I got a right to get even with her, have n’t I? I don’t have to let her be mean to me an’ not be mean to her, do I?”
“But to steal!” cried Henrietta.
“I didn’t either steal!” declared Lem stubbornly. “I just took. I just took her old money an’ put it where she would n’t get it again, so she’d wish she had n’t ever wanted to be mean to me.”
“Where did you put it?” asked Henrietta.
“I won’t tell you!”
“You will tell me! You ‘ll tell me this instant!”
Henrietta had not been a school teacher fot years for nothing. Now, by an instantaneous change, she was all a school teacher – a school teacher able to command rebellious boys for their own good.
“I won’t either tell you!” declared Lem.
“Very well!” said Henrietta, and she arose and began to draw on her stockings.
“What you goin’ to do?” Lem asked.
“No matter,” she said. “You are going to tell me what you did with that money.”
Lem watched her uneasily. She drew on her shoes with the brisk movements of one who knows exactly what she has planned to do and how she has planned to do it. She drew the shoe-laces taut with little jerks that made the metal tips snap against the shoes.
“Are you going to wale me?” asked Lem.
“No matter. You’ll know soon enough.”
“I ain’t afraid of being waled,” said Lem. Henrietta was snapping the hooks of her corset now, not looking at Lem. There was a businesslike briskness in the way she snapped hook after hook and reached for her skirt that frightened Lem.
“Well, anyway, you might tell a feller what you’re goin’ to do to him,” he said uneasily.
“Never mind,” Henrietta said, and jerked the band of the skirt two inches to the left around her waist. She reached for her jacket and thrust her arms into the sleeves, reaching for her hat almost the same instant.
“Well, what do I care who knows where I put the money?” said Lem. “I made her mad, all right. I wa’n’t afraid to say where I put it. You don’t need to think I’m afraid to.” Henrietta jabbed a pin into her hat and put her hand on the doorknob.
“Where did you put it?” she demanded.
“I put it in her shoe.”
“What shoe?”
“Her shoe in her closet.”
“Her Sunday shoes? The shoes with the cloth tops?”
“Yes, mam.”
“All of it?”
Lem nodded an affirmative.
“Very well,” said Henrietta. “You’ll stay here; understand?”
“Yes, mam,” said Lem meekly. “I’ll stay.”
“See that you do, if you know what is good for you,” said Henrietta, and she went into the hall, closing the door behind her, but leaving it unlocked. She knew Lem would not try to run away that night.
CHAPTER XVI
It may be doubted if Henrietta would ever have worked as hard to save herself as she worked that night with Miss Susan to save Lem. At the end of the long plea for the boy, the best Miss Susan would say was that if he was not a thief he was an imp of Satan and she wished she had never set eyes on him. She supposed, however, she would have to keep him for, goodness knew! it was the only way she would ever get her money out of that no-account brother of hers.
Henrietta went back to her room utterly weary and disheartened with the world in general. Lem she sent back to his own room with a warning that he was to try no escape business. The boy was, indeed, too sleepy now to want anything but sleep. He went staggering to his room, and it would be hard to tell whether he or Henrietta was asleep the sooner, for she threw herself on her bed as she was, only removing her hat and jacket, and she did not awaken until the sun on her face and the discomfort of her shoes brought her to herself again. She opened her eyes with a sense that everything was going wrong in her world.
In this feeling she was not far wrong. The amount of her debt – in money – to Lorna, Gay, and Johnnie Alberson, to say nothing of the board money she owed Miss Susan, was enough to worry any school teacher. In Freeman she had a constant source of worriment, not knowing what folly or crime he might undertake next; the lies she had told so freely threatened to make trouble any moment, and she had Gay on her conscience, too.
The next few days held nothing to make Henrietta happier. Johnnie Alberson took up his residence at the boarding-house, and the way in which he flirted with Henrietta did not please Miss Susan.
From the day of his installation at Miss Redding’s, Johnnie Alberson made open and almost outspoken love to Henrietta, and Miss Redding looked upon it sourly. She would have sent Henrietta away instantly but for the equally open and almost outspoken attitude of disapproval shown Johnnie by Henrietta. Henrietta could not, Susan knew, say outright that she was a married woman, but Susan was none the less displeased. She made up her mind that as soon as possible after Johnnie Alberson left, she would send Henrietta away. To interfere while Johnnie remained seemed to her to invite scandalous gossip, and she did not think of sending Johnnie packing. He was an Alberson, and every one knows what that means in Riverbank. Temporarily, therefore, Miss Redding vented her irritation on Lem. He was, a good part of the time, a sulky boy in tears, for he had a new grievance. Miss Susan had taken his dollar and had not returned it.
It has been remarked before, by other observers, how some good women, otherwise admirable, can take a bitter dislike to certain children, and Miss Susan – overworked, harassed by the thought of the scandal-pregnant presence of Henrietta, and “pulled down” by a spell of unusually hot weather – made Lem’s days miserable. She even heaped upon him a crowning indignity and made him wash the dinner dishes. He might almost have washed them in the tears he shed over them.
“I’ve got you, and I suppose I ‘ve got to keep you,” she told him, “but, if so, you’ve got to be of use. I can’t afford to feed useless boys, and it’s no use to bawl about it. You’re better off washing dishes than skirmishing around stealing from folks, anyway.”
If idle hands are the only hands for which the devil finds work, Lem was in little danger of doing the devil’s work during those days. He was too busy doing Miss Susan’s. The great stove in the kitchen seemed to swallow wood by the cord during those hot days, and Miss Susan, for economy’s sake, was burning pine slabs from the sawmill, and they had to be chopped. The big, drab-painted wood box always needed filling. It was always empty to the last handful of pine bark, Lem thought.
The boarding-house dishes, too, seemed to breed in great masses, like sturgeon eggs. He had never imagined there were so many dishes in the world. He had to carry the dishwater to the alley, to empty it, because the grease would kill the grass. He had to pump water for the washlady, who came twice a week. He had to carry water to fill the ewers in all the rooms, and he even suffered the indignity of having to carry down slops. He felt he was a slave and he was more bitterly and miserably resentful than any slave had ever been.
