Grace Livingston Hill

“ A sense of buoyancy bore her up. Her feet touched the grass of the meadow as if it had been full of springs. She lost the consciousness of her great weariness. Her soul had found wings. She was walking into a crimson path of the sunset, and April was in her lungs. How good to be away from the smell of pork chops and hot cabbage, the steam of potatoes and Gene Massey’s voice. Never, never would she go back. Not for all the things [17] she had left behind. They were few. She was glad she had her few little trinkets. ”

“ When Joyce felt her wrists clasped in that iron grip in the darkness, and felt the hot breath of a man on her face, she was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. All the stories of horrors in the night, of hold-ups and bandits and kidnappings came to her mind as she struggled vainly for a moment in that vise-like grip. She tried to scream, though she knew she was too far away from houses to reach the ear of any people who lived about unless some one happened to be going along that road; and people did not go along that road at night unless they had to. ”

“ I never dreamed of you as mine, not in any material sense of the word. I always knew I wasn’t big enough and good enough for you, but I’ve kept you like a shrine in a temple, a place to worship at. You can’t know what it’s meant to me. I’m telling you this because it’s the only way I can thank you for what you did for me. You saved my life, and I want you to know that all that a man has to give a woman, that I have given to you. There will never be any other girl for me!”
Joyce’s head was turned away. ”

“ Joyce was just coming in to take the glasses and replace them with the bouillon cups filled with a delicious concoction that came out of that mixture of bones and meats and vegetables with the addition of a bit of tomato, onion, celery top and parsley, and she stopped short in the pantry with flaming cheeks and quick tears in her eyes, and then stepped hastily back into the kitchen and paused in dismay. What should she do? How could she face that tableful of hateful people with their laughter still upon their lips? ”

“ Joyce smoothed her hair with the tiny comb and mirror in her handbag, and decided to hunt up the railroad station and wash her face. She did not care to appear at Mrs. Bryant’s until her arrangements were more complete, neither did she wish her to know that she was so hard put to it for shelter that she had slept in a newspaper bed all night. It would not look well for her reputation to be poor as a tramp. She wanted to be respected if she was poor, and she wanted to hold up her head and feel independent, not to have people feel they must offer her charity. ”

“ She arose and gathered up her hat and wrap which were lying where she had thrown them when she came in from Judge Peterson’s. Her action seemed to bring Eugene to his senses. He got up and went to the door, opening it but a few inches and looking out with an air of affront.
But Joyce was not outside, as he had half made up his mind she would be. A man stood there in the darkness, a stranger he seemed to be at first glimpse, tall, well built, of almost haughty bearing—a thing Eugene could never tolerate in any man but himself. ”

“ One tall shaft showed where lay the dust of the rich, old, good man who gave the land and built the church, and others less pretentious flocked close at hand, a little social clique of the select dead who had clung to the old church through the years of their life, who there had been christened, married and buried.
With a catch in her breath like a sob Joyce hurried on, realizing that it was here her heart was longing to go, where she had left all that was mortal of her precious Aunt Mary. ”

“ Joyce roused at last, rubbed her eyes and looked around, for a moment forgetting where she was. The little house was full of sweet air and brilliant sunshine, and in the maples overhead two robins were singing with all their might. The world sounded cheerful and busy and she felt rested and more ready for life than when she had crept between her newspapers the night before. ”

“ There is nothing like Jesus Christ to keep a mind sane and steady. Don’t ever utter that thought to any living being again!”
Nan cringed as she stood by the study door. His voice was almost like the command of one who had authority over her.
“Oh, are you sure?” she managed to say weepily. “That’s such a comfort. That thought has tormented me night and day, perhaps Joyce was shut up in some awful insane asylum—”
“Hush!” said the doctor sternly. “That could never be. She may have fallen into some danger, or be sick in some hospital, but never that! She is God’s own child.” ”

“ He went to a hotel and read the story over again and turned the pages aimlessly to find more about it, but in his soul there grew that knowledge of himself that brought a sense of sin. So far it was only sin in the eyes of the girl who stood to him for all that was pure and holy in the world, but it was sin, and the weight of the knowledge of it lay like a burden upon him. His smile grew grave whenever it appeared, and his eyes took on their sad wistfulness. People looked after him sometimes and thought how strangely sad he looked for a young man as fine and strong as he seemed to be. ”

“ Strong beyond most, he could walk among pitch when he liked without being soiled, yet he often chose to play with that pitch and minded not if others saw it on his hands, or misunderstood his actions. Beautiful as the devil must have been before he fell, with dark eyes, bronze-gold hair, inclined to curl, and a smile of more than ordinary beauty, yet sad, too, with the sadness of the lost sometimes. Nobody quite knew what it was about Darcy Sherwood that made them like him so, or just what they so utterly disapproved of. ”

“ A picket fence with scaling ancient paint, and a gate with a chain and weight guarded the quiet haven, and the fitful moonlight quavered out and showed the dim outline of a hammock slung between the maples close to the west porch. Joyce remembered a long, beautiful afternoon when she had lain in that hammock and read a book while Aunt Mary sat on the porch with Julia Hartshorn and sewed. ”

“ Day by day the little house grew more homelike and cosy.
The home-made bed was a wonderful success. Mounted on four solid little square boxes six inches high, and nailed firmly to them, with a valance and cover of gray denim, and cotton pillows covered with the same, it seemed a luxurious couch. At night when the cover was removed it made a wonderful bed. When Joyce finally attained a fluffy pink comfortable made of cotton batting and a remnant of pink cheese cloth tied with pink yarn, she felt that she slept in luxury. ”

“ You have an unusually fine mind, and if you would once give up these foolish legends and prejudices with which your mind is filled you would be a brilliant woman with a great future before you.”
Joyce stood up and looked at him gravely, her eyes brilliant, her cheeks flushed.
“I may not be a brilliant woman,” she said sweetly, “but I certainly have a great future before me. I’m going to live and reign with Jesus Christ some day, and I don’t really think it matters so very much whether I’m brilliant down here or not with that in view. ”

“ So Joyce went down the short path to her own door with gratitude in her heart and a ten dollar bill in her hand, saying over to herself the words that had leaped to her lips of a sudden out of the stores of the past when she and Aunt Mary learned whole chapters out of the Bible and repeated them to one another:
“And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord.”
“Isn’t it almost funny,” she said to herself thoughtfully, “The money comes back just as fast as I spend it for the things I need, faster in fact. ”

“ Joyce’s home began to have a reputation all its own, showing a girl could live alone and yet keep free from all the unconventions of the modern world. If any one grew troublesome there was always Mrs. Bryant to whom she might call, and Mrs. Bryant understood and always happened in whenever she knew Joyce had a caller who might want to stay alone.
So the fall passed and the winter entered in.
Jim had finished the chimney and fireplace, and the little room was warm and cosy, even on a bitter November evening with the wind howling outside. ”

“ Well, she isn’t spoiled, that’s one thing certain, but it always seems to me when you work real hard to escape one trouble, you’re like as not to run head on to another that’s about as bad. Look what’s happened now. I don’t blame Joyce Radway one little mite for not standing that Nannette. She’s got a tongue like a hissing serpent, and she can wind that light-minded, weak-chinned, bull-headed husband of hers around her little finger. How that poor bag of meal ever came to be Mary Massey’s son I can’t figure, even with a husband like Hiram Massey, for Mary Massey was the salt of the earth. ”

“ She could walk out and leave this impossible woman to her fate. Let her get up and serve her own guests, and wash her own dishes afterwards and keep her own ten dollar bill, yes, and her school positions too. There were other people in the world—and the tears rolled down her hot, angry cheeks.
“Surely He shall deliver thee,—Surely—Surely—”
It rang in her ears like a voice, a reminder.
“Yes, I know—” said her tired heart. She mustn’t get into the habit of walking out back doors when she didn’t like things. She really mustn’t. ”

“ While the owner of the calm eyes was hurrying distractedly about the kitchen seeking for the pie lifter and a holder, Joyce quickly turned out the gas under the oven, and threw open the lower door. It was as she supposed, there was grease and drippings from the broiling chops in the pan below the broiler and it had caught on fire and was blazing high. It was of no use to try to smother it out or to save the chops. They were burned to a crisp already and the kitchen was filling fast with a black, oozy soot that was fastening to every immaculate pot and pan and to the wall and ceiling. ”

“ Here was a woman much like Nannette, who appeared, to think the world was made all for herself. Joyce longed to lay down the knife with which she had loosened the cake from its pan and walk out of the kitchen as she had walked out of her cousin’s kitchen a few days before, never to return, but she reflected that she could not go on walking out of situations all her life that she did not like, and moreover it would be a mean thing to leave the lady with her dinner only half got and company coming. ”

“ Because Faith is the gift of God in answer to our deliberate act of belief. Joyce had no question but that her Father’s hand was in every happening of her life and had one suggested that all these things would have happened anyway, whether she believed, or prayed or not, she would have merely smiled as at one who is talking about something he does not understand. ”

“ They called Jesus divine because they could find no better word to call Him, but we were all divine, all the children of God as was Jesus, and all able to do what Jesus did. Perhaps not in the same degree, for he was the greatest man that ever lived, but still, in a sense, we could do for suffering humanity just what Jesus did. If we were not actual physicians, able to heal disease, we could yet persuade men to common sense, awake them to open their eyes to things about them.
Joyce sat straighter in her seat and her cheeks grew hot with excitement. ”

“ Suppose he had been the one to catch her and hold her hands in a vise-like grip last night! Her soul turned sick within her.
He came up the steps prating in a loud voice about women, called them “dames” and “skirts,” and his laughter was an offense. Laughter is like smells, it can be fragrant as the morning or it can be foul as the breath of a gutter. This man’s laughter was like a noxious gas.
Joyce would have fled if the aisle had not been blocked either way. ”

“ And then Joyce as she came and went with relays of hot biscuits and peas and potatoes heard Mrs. Bryant tell carefully how she rubbed the mustard into the meat, etc., through all the performance just as she had done it, and finish up:
“Yes, we think it is the best way in the world to cook ham,” just as if she had been doing it that way all her life. She smiled to herself over the salad as she arranged the ice cold tomatoes on the crisp lettuce leaves. Well, it was a pretty dinner and she was proud to think she had helped make it so. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ For Joyce had often watched an old neighbor of theirs in Meadow Brook who was an upholsterer. She knew all the little tricks. She knew how the webbing should be nailed on taut, how the springs must be sewed to the webbing, and then tied down level, and the padding of cotton and hair put on the top of that. She was sure she could do it, though she had never tried it. Joyce was not beyond trying anything if necessity drove her to it. She had once made a lovely feather fan out of chicken feathers and an old ivory frame. She felt she could make a bedstead if she tried hard enough. ”