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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.