Not Under the Law

by Grace Livingston Hill

Dan appeared, clean shaven, kindly eyed, with a square jaw like his father’s and a determined set to his shoulders.

“Dan, we’ve got to find that little girl right away. Understand?”

“Yes, father. So I told Darcy Sherwood last night. I’ve a notion we’ll be on her track soon. Darcy gets around quite a good bit, and he seemed interested. Always thought a good bit of Aunt Mary, you know. Any danger of that poor fish of a Gene lighting out?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said the Judge, “He’s too mad. Thinks his dignity has been offended. It’s about all he’s got left of the family pride, his dignity and he’s working that for all it’s worth. He likes to be bowed down to, has ever since he was born, and he thinks his mother’s Christianity was wide enough to cover him and his fat, lazy family. I don’t want to do injustice to anybody, Dan, but I’ve a notion that chump needs a lesson or two and I’m figuring on being able to give it to him in a few days. I don’t know why good women like Mary Massey have to be afflicted with conceited puppies for sons. I suppose she loved him so she spoiled him. Women mostly do. Take your mother. Dan, you’d have been a ruined man if it hadn’t been for the lickings I gave you with the old birch rod down behind the barn when your mother’d gone to missionary meeting. You’ve never thanked me for that, Dan, but you’re a better man for it, you know. Now, Dan, just slip me those pants on the nail behind you, lad. I’m going to surprise your mother. Hurry up. I hear those ham and eggs coming!”

With the help of Dan, Judge Peterson got into his nether garments and was sitting on the side of the bed when his wife arrived with the ham and eggs, and though a bit weak and trembly he insisted on sitting up in the rocking chair without pillows while he ate his breakfast. The old zest for work and fight had lifted him at last from his weakness back into the world again and he was determined to get right into line. Of course the doctor hustled him back to bed again when he arrived, and glad enough he was to get there, though he wouldn’t own it, but in the half-hour after he had finished the ham and eggs and before the doctor arrived he managed to get quite a number of little things started that meant business for all those who were trying to oppress any of his beloved clients.

When Dan Peterson came home for the noonday meal he was able to report that several lines of secret organizations that thread this land of ours like hidden tracery had been set vibrating with efforts to find Joyce Radway and restore her if possible at once to her home. Meantime Eugene Massey had been notified that while he would be at liberty of course to remain in the home where his mother had lived for so many years until its rightful owner could be found and should return, it must be thoroughly understood that nothing about the place must be hurt or sold or destroyed in any way.

It was all done very quietly, and nobody in town was told. Judge Peterson was friends with everybody, but he had been able to go about that town for a good many years without letting his neighbors so much as dream that he knew aught about them and their affairs, or anybody else’s, and he was not going to begin now by disgracing the family of his old friend Mary Massey. Eugene and Nannette simply were made to understand that they must walk carefully, and that they were under surveillance. Nannette grew to have a hunted, ingratiating look, and stayed at home more than had been her custom. She spent much time writing letters to Joyce and addressing them to “General Delivery” in every part of the country. She even put advertisements in the personal columns of one or two big city papers in parts of the country where her fancy thought Joyce might have wandered. She questioned Dorothea and Junior nightly on what they knew about Joyce’s friends, and habits in the village; and concerning anything that had been said to them during the day about her. They acquired the habit of being sharply alert to any scrap of news that might bear in the remotest degree upon the tragedy in their home. For even to their childish minds this that had happened in their family had assumed the proportions of a tragedy. Their mother cried a good deal and scarcely ever made desserts for dinner. Their father had locked up cousin Joyce’s room and taken the key. They were forbidden to go into the parlor and play on the piano, and anything that had been very especially nice in the way of furniture was guarded carefully. Their father explained to them that it might mean some one had to go to jail if it turned out that they had no right to things and any thing had been injured. Scarcely a night passed that their father and their mother did not have a wild orgy of argument ending in a fit of weeping on their mother’s part. Dorothea and Junior decided that it would have been better to have Joyce back. Besides, they were hungry for jelly roll. They even set out on one or two expeditions of their own to find their cousin, but only got into some trouble each time, and once Junior barely escaped with his life from under the wheels of an automobile.

But the worst of all to their thinking was when their father decided that they must all go to church every Sunday. Dorothea didn’t mind so much because she could wear her prettiest clothes, but Junior hated the white stiff collar his mother made him wear, and the sitting so long without wriggling, for Eugene was very strict, and the time seemed endless.

Quite respectably they filed into the church the first Sunday after Joyce disappeared, just as if they had been doing so regularly during the three years they had lived in Meadow Brook. Of course every one thought they were doing the proper thing after a death in the family, and would probably never come again. But the minister welcomed them gravely, and Nannette in her new black veil which was almost becoming, dabbed her eyes with a black-bordered handkerchief when he spoke of the departed mother who had been so faithful in her church attendance during the many years. People spoke to them sympathetically, it was not in their scheme of Christian living to do otherwise; but one or two sharp voiced sisters who believed in “speaking their minds,” asked pointedly after Joyce and wanted to know when she would be back. Nannette had by this time concocted a flexible story about her having gone to see several distant relatives of her father’s in response to a telegram. Whereupon one keen minded sister who had a daughter in the telegraph office hastened home to acquire further details. Before night Nannette’s version of Joyce’s western visit had grown and acquired definite shape, with a definite destination and even the length of time she was to stay. It reached the minister’s wife who told it to the minister on the way home from church, and they decided to write to the minister in the town where Joyce was visiting and ask him to call on her and make her feel at home, and incidentally discover if she looked happy and all was well with her. So the ball rolled on, and Eugene, despite his ravings and rantings, was powerless to stop it.

Lib Knox suddenly began to cultivate Dorothea’s companionship industriously, using her own peculiar methods for so doing. She brought Dorothea a handful of tulips which she had stealthily extracted from one of the finest gardens in town, and she offered her five minutes’ lick from her all-day sucker. Now, although Lib was somewhat of a social outcast, much sneered at by the children who were not in her clique, Dorothea was nevertheless flattered by the unusual attention given her by this notorious outlaw, and was presently deep in the ecstasy of an illicit friendship with a child whom respectable mothers tabooed. Not that Lib at the age of eight had reached any depths of wickedness beyond most, but she had no respect for age and class, she did as she pleased without regard to clothes and manners, and she could sling a fine line of truth uttered in purest Saxon language at any one who dared attempt to interfere in any of her plans. “Not a nice little girl” was what the mothers met in social conclave said about her, and she early knew it and delighted to distress them by cultivating their young hopefuls and leading them into bypaths of mischief where only her guiding hand could lead them safely out again. Lib cultivated Dorothea until Dorothea was as wax in her hands, and no foreign spy or diplomat could have used advantage with keener skill than did little Lib Knox of the dancing bronze curls and the wicked green eyes. What she did not extract of facts from unsuspecting Dorothea’s soul was not worth extracting.