Not Under the Law

by Grace Livingston Hill

But the darkness was reassuring. The dimmed lights of the automobile that had stood by the roadside were no longer visible. The men had gone away in the other direction. She was alone on the road—with at least another mile to go before she could turn again into the highway, and she found an overwhelming tremble upon her. Her very spirit seemed to be quivering with it. The night which had been warm and balmy seemed turned to fearful cold and she shivered as she tried to hurry along. Now and then the moon swept out and threw her shadow along the way, and she glanced furtively behind her and shrank into the shadow of the elderberry bushes by the fence. Once a wild rabbit scuttled across the road and startled her so that she almost fell. She began to reproach herself for having gone away from home in this silly aimless way, losing her temper like a child and walking out from safety and protection without preparation. She wondered if God were angry with her for it. She wondered why she had done it and what she was going to do anyway, but most of all she wondered what those dark figures on the hillside had been doing, and why the shoulders of her friend had drooped as if with shame. Most of all this dragged upon her soul and kept her from fleetness. For how must the feet drag when the heart is weighed down!

She came at last into the highway, and heard by the tolling of the clock on a distant barn that it was two o’clock. It gave her a strange sense of detachment from the world to be thus adrift at that dark, prowling time of the night.

The road was empty either way. Not even a light of a distant car was in sight. If she could only hope to find a place of shelter before another came. Surely it could not be much longer so empty on the highway. Some one would be going by. Some one would see her. They would think it strange. They would think ill of her if they saw her. There was no hope for help from any passing car. She would not dare accept it if it were offered.

Ahead she saw a strip of woods. Her brain began to function. That would be the grove just before you came to old Julia Hartshorn’s house, and Julia Hartshorn lived just outside of Heatherdell. Heatherdell was a little town and she knew many of the people. She would not be lonely there. But where could she go? She must not be seen out at that time of night by any one she knew unless she came to it and appealed for help. That would mean that she would have to tell the circumstances of her being out from home in the blackness of night. That would mean criticism for Eugene and Nannette, no matter how gently she might tell her tale, nor how much she took the blame upon herself. And that would have hurt Aunt Mary. For Aunt Mary’s sake she must not let any talk go around. Aunt Mary knew that Nannette was jealous of her, and that Eugene was sometimes hard on her, but Aunt Mary loved her son, even though she knew his faults, and Joyce would never willingly make any gossip that would reflect upon the family. Eugene was right. He knew Joyce’s conscience. It was functioning right on true to type even now in her terror and perplexity.

If only she had not gone to that cemetery! If only she had not turned aside and allowed herself to give up and cry upon Aunt Mary’s grave, and lose all that time. She might have been far away now, in a safe, quiet room somewhere that she had hired for the night. There would have been places where she could have found a room for a very little. She had some money, she didn’t remember how much, with her—it didn’t matter. There were a few dollars. Perhaps, too, she had put that gold piece in her handbag, she wasn’t sure of that. The day had been so long and hard, so many things had been within its hours. She could not recall what she had picked up to carry with her that morning. She was too weary to care.

But she couldn’t bear to go away without bidding good-bye to the spot where Aunt Mary and her mother lay, and perhaps too she had felt she could better think what to do, there in the quiet with the two graves.

Well, there was no use in excusing herself. She had gone. She shuddered at the horror of the last hour, and then that burden again to find out it was that one—and to wonder. What had he been doing? Was it then true, all the whispers that had come to her ears, of his life?

Around the bend ahead dashed a light. A car was coming at last. She remembered he had said he would come after her. She glanced back, but it was all darkness. Even if he did come would she want to meet him? Could she explain her presence out at night? He was now an almost stranger. He knew naught of her life. And perhaps it would be better if she did not know his.

She glanced fearfully ahead. The light was growing brighter, was almost blinding. She stepped out of its range and crept among some bushes till the glare and the swift passing car were gone, and watched the little red tail light blink and disappear. Then keeping quite close to the bank she slid along, fearful of another car so near to the bend of the road. It might come upon her unaware and if she were in the glare she would naturally be noticed by the driver. She trembled at the very thought, and hurried along, limbs sometimes stumbling and almost falling in the tall grass.

But presently she came in sight of Julia Hartshorn’s cottage, a little quiet brown affair, with gingerbread fretwork on its porches and moss on its roof, set far back from the street in a grove of maples, like a tiny island off the mainland of the larger grove near by.