The trouble in Thor

by Armstrong Charlotte

  If Henry did not find her beautiful and desirable he would have slapped her away long since with some decisive humiliation. But he had not. Not yet. And so powerful is a whisper wrapped in the scent of flesh in the dark, the words would ring desperately honest. Oh, Henry would not think her maudlin or brazen or even unwomanly, but rather a woman as brave and direct as a man.

  She smiled. Henry was naive, too, in a way. All men were naive. (Except Cyril. He was not. But she cast her brother out of her thoughts.)

  Oh, she could have driven him wild, she thought. But had not. Had drawn so softly away. Well, that was wise, too. Her lips parted. She'd driven him wild enough, she thought, and her heart swelled with what was in it, the sweet sensation of her power.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Company's frame building was pamted a pinkish tan, and in its long fagade there were three entrances unevenly spaced. The one at the east end of the offices was a good forty feet away from the other two sets of double doors that led into the store.

  But there was a small grilled window let into this blank wall and through it, on paydays, the people of Thor received their wages. On such days a line of them rambled out over the street—Pollack women with scarves tied under their chins, women in house-dresses, women, some men, some boys.

  The v^esternmost entrance to the store led through the grocer}' and hardware, the other through the dry goods, jewelry, haberdasher)', and miscellaneous. Inside, of course, the store was actually one vast room cut up bv half-partitions, counters, cases and aisles, smelling indescribably of all its wares, turpentine and cheese, new cloth and leather, rubber and spice. And far inside, at the back of the dry goods, opposite the rack of cotton clothing, there was another small grilled window.

  It sometimes seemed that money came out of the buildmg at the first windo^', hesitated out of doors perhaps long enough for its owner to count it, and then came in through one of the other entrances and flowed through the second wmdow and the hands of the store cashier right back to where it came from. Or it might be concluded that the Company paid in kind.

  There was no other store in the town of Thor.

  Wednesday morning, when Cyril Varker opened the pay-

  window, there was already a group waiting quietly in the hot sun. Wednesday was going to be a scorcher.

  Payday began. Each came in his turn up to the window and received a rake of Cyril's upturned eye, his cold recognition, and then waited for the somewhat ceremonial search of his hands for the proper envelope. Cyril rarely spoke. His eye accused. "What, you here? What money for you?" And his hand gave it finally with an air of having found a trifle somewhere of which he had only just been reminded.

  Paydays were happy days. He liked to see the people's faces so often eager and smiling, then nervous and anxious under his stare. Could something have gone wrong? Had there been a misunderstanding? And then on each face the relief as it fell, in the sag of the cheek, the soft downward fold of the eyelid, and finally he would watch for the face to turn to the store and betray, in its tightening, that the battle of old bills versus new desires had only begun all over again.

  This was Company business in which he represented the Company. But he sometimes had a little pleasure all his own.

  When, as the long line wound by,, the face of Wesley Trezona appeared before him, Cyril lifted his lip. The boy's face was pale and sought mercy, was eager for mercy, ready to break into a great full smile for mercy's sake. Cyril held the envelope as if it were soiled and distasteful.

  "Mr. Varker," said Wesley in a low, hoarse voice, "keep it all this time? And next time too?"

  Cyril, head lowered, brow corrugated, looked up.

  "This is too little. Next time's too late."

  "I know, but please ... If you could wait . . ."

  "Better bring me the balance bv Saturday," said Cyril lightly as if this were easy. He knew it was impossible.

  "I . . . please . . ."

  "Saturday. My house." Cyril's pale eye stabbed him. "Or must I go to your father? Move on. Get along. Busy today."

  The boy moved out of the line in a daze, numb, despairing.

  Cyril paid off Mrs. Bettiga, with Mr. Bettiga's envelope, and received a barrage of Italian which he neither under-

  stood nor listened to. He hadn't the least intention of going to the boy's father over this debt. He was not desperate for the money. No, Wesley should sweat blood for three days and then Cyril would have cruel mercy.

  He knew it was cat and mouse, of course. He was neither proud nor ashamed of it. He simply enjoyed it. It was balm of a sort. They were all fools. This was his small, secret power and it entertained him. There was a little spice of danger too.

  Cyril knew quite well the risk he ran, for his rate of interest was fantastic. But he liked that. As he liked the tension, liked being hated and feared and sought after just the same. Liked the shambling, shuffling, anxious, hesitant appearance of another victim. Who had heard this somewhere . . . ? Somebody had said that Mr. Varker might let him have . . . for a short while . . . Cyril liked the baring of the need, the outpouring of fervent gratitude and, later, the screws tightening.

  Cyril liked the exeicise of his judgment too. Liked the putting on of utter innocent blank denial.

  "No truth whatever in the rumor. I'm a poor man. . . . Where did you hear that?"

  Sometimes this was necessary. For such people as that Fred Davies, who was wild to buy himself an automobile, Cyril could do nothing. Nothing at all. No doubt Davies would have paid the principal and the high interest, too, promptly and cheerfully, but money was not everything. Cash profit was not all Cyril cared for.

  And besides, once having paid up, Davies was more than likely to talk about it with no particular shame. No, the forthright, the confident, the open-eyed, who were willing to pay a high rate for a legitimate advantage, were not the type.

  Wesley Trezona now. There was the type. Guilt-ridden.

  Cyril raked the next face with a show of cold suspicion. "You are Mrs. Miller?" he said to a girl he knew quite well to be a bride.

  A very pleasant day was payday.

  At the head of his dinner table, that Wednesday, Captain Trezona dipped into the pudding. His blue eyes were thoughtful.

  "They asked me to go, too, Pa," Dorothy said. "So can I go?"

  She couldn't go. She and her mother and brothers knew this already. She couldn't go to Lark Lake.

  The captain said, "Robins' cottage, eh? H'overnight, Darithy?"

  "Yes, Pa. Mrs. Robins will be there."

  "And 'oo else?"

  Dorothy named girls' names.

  "Go to our church, do they?"

  "Three of them are Catholic, two Episcopal."

  The captain disposed of a mouthful thoroughly. "Be going over to that there pavilion, Darithy, h'after dark?"

  "I don't know," Dorothy said.

  She, of the three children, resembled the captain with her narrow face, her narrow mouth, her high-bridged nose; but the fair, firm, pink-and-white of her young flesh made the cast of her face seem delicate and fine.

  "Dancin' there?" the captain asked. "Drinkin'?"

  "I dunno, Pa, if they'd go."

  But she knew they would go. In the soft evening after all the swimming and sunny play, the girls would make a giggling rowboat full and the boat would drift to the edge of the light cast from that wicked place to linger where the music would wash over them. Oh, they would be drawn; the tides in their young blood would set that way. Enchanted, the boat would drift to the lure.

  And if a boy they knew were to hail them, who could promise that the boat might not dip dizzily alongside and at least one bold girl climb up and set her slippers sliding on the polished floor? Or even if a boy they didn't know thought one of them was pretty and began to tease. Josephine Doyle was awfully pretty and a devil, everyone knew. She wasn't scared. And Mrs. Robins on the cottage porch across the bay could not, with her bright lantern burning, see far through the screen.

  "Th
ey might go," said Dorothy stoically.

  "Not you," her father said. "No girl of mine. No boy, either. Dancin', drinkin', spoilin' the Lord's work in their bodies. Temptin' themselves."

  Dorothy dipped her spoon into the pudding. She hadn't expected his permission.

  Eedie said serenely, ''Will you 'ave a little more of the custard, fayther?"

  "No mither, great plenty, no more."

  "Catholics think it's no harm to dance. Do they?" Dickie, the youngest asked abruptly. He was twelve, dark, thin, a tense little boy thinking his own thoughts.

  " 'Ush," said his mother.

  "Wicked things do be done," the captain said sternly, "us can be sure. But the Lord, 'E knows when you do what 'E forbids. Remember that."

  "Why doesn't He forbid the Catholics?" Dickie was just asking.

  "He's not sassy, Pa," Dorothy said quickly.

  Eedie felt a stab of joy, because her daughter loved the little brother.

  " 'E may not be sassy," Dickie's Pa said, "but 'e's on the wrong track, I see." His frosty eye canceled out the humorous timbre of his voice.

  Dickie hid any quailing; his small face was impassive.

  "Catholics and some, to be sure, may think it's no 'arm. That makes no difference to the sin." The captain's glance went to his eldest, "They say the Priest 'as wine to 'is table, and there's card playin' goin' on. There's corruption," the captain said, "and they may think it's no 'arm, but they'll answer."

  "God must feel kinda sorry for them, though," Dickie said licking his spoon.

  Eedie had to fight down her delight. There was a little wickedness of mirth that often lay in ambush, a warm joyous spot at the bottom of her heart. It would surge into her throat and make her want to laugh. Ah, the boy was clever, wasn't 'e, though? 'E was the thoughtful one! Ah, the long thoughts in the little 'ead! It was wicked to feel such pride. She must not laugh, and she had no business, either, to think, as she did momentarily, that the boy was in the right. Well? Did not the loving Father in Heaven know how they had thought they did no harm?

  ". , . Not what a man thinks," the captain said severely,

  "but what 'e does, lad. And 'e must do God's Will. As the Bible tells us, and as 'e prays to understand it."

  Eedie's own head bent with the rebuke which was just. Yes, now she saw.

  "If 'e does wrong, the Lord 'Imself may be 'urt and sorry, but He will repay. So be sorry for them, if you must be," the captain went on, "but watch out you do no evil, as you do understand it." His head bent and he went into Scripture. "Thou 'ast said," he intoned, "none seeth Me. Thy wisdom and Thy knowledge 'ast perverted thee. Therefore, shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth. . . ."

  He went on mouthing silently the ancient music and Eedie, head bent reverently too, prayed quite cheerfully in her heart, "Deliver us from evil."

  When the captain raised his head and cleared his throat, the signal that he had returned to the world of flesh, Wesley mumbled, "Excuse me. Ma? Pa?"

  The captain nodded, but Eedie's eye caught the state of Wesley's pudding bowl. " 'Aven't eaten up your . . ."

  "Too much for me," Wesley said whitely over his shoulder. "Too hot for pudding . . ." and he went whipping up the stairs.

  At once she wondered if he were going to be sick and half rose from the table.

  "Pity," the captain said, "a sorry waste there."

  "I'd be glad to eat it," said Dickie promptly, theology forgotten.

  "God bless 'is appetite. 'E shall 'ave it," said Eedie, sinking back. She had the instinct to cover over her alarm.

  Leaving the dinner dishes to Dorothy who would dream over them but eventually get them done, Eedie herself went slowly up the stairs. The long leisurely afternoon lay before her for the morning work was done, Gideon gone to the mine; nought to do now till suppertime but laze in the heat, embroider on the porch, be happy. This afternoon held no such peace, yet.

  She stood before her eldest's door. He was not asleep although he ought to have been. She knew he was not The

  crunch of his body, thrashing on the bed, came faintly to her ears, and some emanation of trouble was at the same time just as sensible to her heart.

  She went in.

  "Ma?"

  She sat down beside him and touched his head. It was wet with sweat.

  "Ma?" he said in anguish.

  Her fingers stirred, making little loving strokes at the nape of his neck.

  "Ma, I've done some bad things. I got in trouble."

  I love you just the same, of course, her fingers said.

  "Now it's money. Ma. I owe a man a lot of money. I can't pay. He'll tell Pa. What can I do?"

  She attacked her complete bewilderment slowly and carefully.

  "You owe money?"

  "Ma, it's three hundred dollars. I haven't got it."

  This was a shocking sum. Of course he had no such amount. Nor did she. Or ever would.

  " 'Ow do you come to owe . . . ?"

  "I borrowed it. That was O.K. I was to pay interest and all. But now I can't."

  " 'Oo loaned you it, Wesley?" she asked slowly.

  "Mr. Varker."

  " '7m/ 'E loaned you three hundred dollars!"

  "Comes to that now," Wesley rolled and rolled again. "Ma, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. What can I do?"

  "What did you do with the money, son?"

  "I . . . had to have it." He writhed under her hand. "Listen, Ma, I might as well ... I took too much to drink one night. A bunch of us . . . but I took the most. Then we took Mr. Olsen's car . . . for a joke, we thought. I was driving. I ran into the bridge. And, and, and . . . there were damages . . ."

  Her hand was still.

  "I borrowed to pay. And then I . . . Ma, I even lost some of that, playing cards . . ." he choked.

  Sins! So many sins! Drinking, stealing, sneaking, gambhng. . . . Her fingers were still with shock. But she made them

  move again as steadily gentle as ever, proclaiming her love, even so.

  "You did wTong," she said quietly.

  "Ma, I don't know how I came to get into it. I don't know. The kids were all watching me. . , . You know."

  Sneering at the obedient son? He must prove he was no coward, he must swagger somehow and break over the rules in another place and do some daring deed?

  "Ma, I didn't go to get drunk. I ... I had some beer once before. But this was whiskey. He asked me if I'd have it. Well, I ... I didn't want to back down."

  "Showing off," said Eedie, not reproachfully, but to let him know she understood. (No harm in that, surely.)

  "Showing off, that's what it was all right. Showing off. Then, well, we ... we ... we .. . thought it was funny to take Mr. Olsen's car and go riding around. But I was too dizzy. First thing I knew. Ma, I had to pay Mr. Olsen."

  Speedy Olsen he was called. He ran the saloon. A touchy and evil man. Eedie shuddered.

  "He said he'd keep quiet if he got paid. He didn't want trouble. So I . . . they told me . . . ever^'body said Mr. Varker would let you have money business-like, and you could pay it off. And I had to pay Mr. Olsen, Ma. I knew I couldn't take as much out of my pay as ... as they thought, because Pa would know. So it wasn't enough. So I thought I could maybe win enough. Well, I was wrong. Wrong about everything . . . everything. So I quit that," he swallowed, "but I quit too late. I had to get a little more from Mr. Varker . . . and I got Mr. Olsen paid all right . . . but Mr. Varker only loaned it till this Saturday. I gave him all my own money ever since then. But it wasn't enough. It can't ever be enough . . . and he won't wait. He'll tell Pa."

  "Your Pa will pay," said Eedie with a stiffening mouth.

  This will break Pa's 'eart, she was thinking, break 'is 'eart in two.

  Evil had come. They were not to be delivered from it. The good man, the good man would have his heart broken. Oh, the captain would pay the debt. He'd have the money. It was not the money.

  But his pain. His pain.

  Eedie saw everything at once, all of it.
Wesley's temptation, the strain put upon him by the captain's dictum, and how weakly he had given in to the strain and slipped along to this. Oh, she saw it from inside Wesley and she could not blame him. He was a good boy; it had been too hard. Too hard. The others had urged him on, she had no doubt. There had been more pressure than the captain guessed.

  Nevertheless, since she saw it from inside the captain too, she did not blame him either, for never guessing how hard it would be.

  Ah, if a man is leading those he loves above all others on earth across a narrow bridge that carries from birth to salvation, and if his whole heart is in his task to help them, to keep them safe, to get them past the chasm, and one beloved child slips off into the torrents below, how much will the man suffer? Though it be none of his fault, how much will he grieve?

  At least as much as if this were to happen in the world of flesh, on an iron bridge over solid rock and river water. She met her son's eyes and saw that Wesley, exactly as well as she, knew what he had done. He could not bear it. Ah, he was a good loving son to his father, though a sinner.

  "Ah, Wesley." It was a groan, a sigh, but a sharing of sorrow. "We must pray."

  "If there was only a way to pay him and Pa wouldn't know." Her big son, Wesley, began to weep, "I'll never . . . I'll never . . ."

  "I know that. You'll never ... I know that, Wesley, my dear." And she did know. He would never sin these sins again, but the harm was done all the same. She had no money, no money at all. Nowhere in all the world could she find that much money on her own and Pa not know it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Some summer nights the town of Thor lay in its woodsy cup and saw the heat hghtning play, the ragged crests of the hills leap into silhouette against that soundless flickering. But often the blazing midsummer sky would begin to darken in the late afternoon and, just about suppertime, the thun-derheads would roll up in the west and hang over the town for an hour of threat and tension before they broke.