The Red Signal (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (5 page)

 And he was coming back again! Oh, horror! Somehow she must get away before he came! She must not stay in this house another day!

 It came to her that he was not yet gone. He might return to the house again. She could see him standing now between the cabbage plants, pointing to the little tool house made of bricks with an iron door. Then there flashed across her mind what he had said about the powder house. Powder and dynamite! Why should they need such things on a truck farm? She had always connected them with a red flag and blasting on a city street. But powder here! What did it mean? Where did they keep it? Surely not down in that hole with the iron trap-door below her bedroom window. They wouldn't put such things near enough to a house to blow it up! The tool house! It looked too small to hide much. It was little more than a wart on the side of a bunchy hill with young corn, growing all about it. The barn? It was very large, but did they ever keep such things in a wooden building? Was that one reason why the barn was always locked? Why Schwarz was so angry at Sylvester once for leaving the door ajar?

Hilda shuddered at thought of the peril that might be all about her. She shuddered again as the sharp voice of the woman below stairs called her. She was peeling potatoes in the kitchen and her mistress was busy making pies at the kitchen table when she heard the strange whirring noise again that had so startled her in the night. She jumped and dropped a potato back into the pan again, looking up at Mrs. Schwarz with wide eyes:

 “Oh, what is that?"

 “How should I know? Attend to your work!” the woman answered crossly.

But Hilda's eyes were fixed on the open Window, for out of the meadow behind the barn there arose a large, bird-like structure, skimming the air, and floating upward as lightly and easily as a mote in a sunbeam.

“Why! That must have been-----!” Hilda began breathlessly, then caught her breath and changed her sentence. “Why! That is an aeroplane! I have seen them sometimes far up over Chicago. But never so close. But an aeroplane out here in the country! How did it come, Mrs. Schwarz?”

 There was no answer and, turning, the girl saw that the woman stood absently gazing out of the window, a. look of woe on her face and tears streaming down her cheeks.

HILDA'S heart was touched instantly. Springing toward her mistress she cried:

“Mrs. Schwarz, you are crying! Is something dreadful the matter? Oh, I am so sorry!” and she timidly put her arm about the stout shoulder that, since the words of sympathy, had begun to shake with sobs. There was something terrible in seeing this great bulk of a woman with her sharp tongue and stolid ways all broken up crying.

“It iss my poy!” she wailed into her apron. “They vill send him avay to var! My only poy! Und there iss no need. He iss too young, und I know he vill get into drubble. He vas exempt. Ve got him exempt on accound of the farm, und now the orders haf come from the Fatherland, und he must go!”

 “But what has the Fatherland got to do with him?” asked Hilda puzzled. “This is America. We are Americans. Why don't you tell the Fatherland you don't want him to go?”

Hilda's heart sank within her at the thought of keeping Sylvester at borne; nevertheless, she was touched by the poor woman's grief.

But the woman shook her head and wiped her eyes despairingly.

“It iss no use!” she sighed. “Ye must do as the Fatherland orders. Ve are Germans. They know pest!”

Suddenly the voice of Schwarz boomed forth just outside the door. His wife turned as if she had been shot and bolted up the stairs. Hilda had sense enough to finish her potatoes without a sign that anything unusual had just been going on, but her mind was in a turmoil over the strange and dreadful things which were constantly being revealed to her. What did it all mean, anyway? How should the Fatherland reach out to free America and presume to order what free Americans should do? And why should they want men to go into an army with whom they were at war? A great light suddenly broke upon her understanding as she sat staring out into the brilliant blue of the sky where only a few moments ago the great aeroplane had become a mere speck and vanished out of sight. There certainly was something queer about this place, and she must get out of it just as quickly as possible. She wished with all her heart she had taken warning from the few light words the nice young engineer had said about spies and turned about then and there. But how absurd! She had no money with which to return. And where would she have gone? Her mother had already been hurried off to Wisconsin to take charge of the orphans, and Uncle Otto would have been very angry to have her return before she had even been to the place where he sent her. Of course, Uncle Otto did not realize what this place was like, or he never would have sent her. He would not want her to stay, and, of course, he would send her money to come back when he got her letter. But, oh, even a day or two was long to wait!

 She began to wonder whether she had made her case strong enough in the letter. Uncle Otto would have no patience with suspicions. And yet she could scarcely have told more without writing a very long letter, and for that she had not had time. But perhaps she ought to write again to hurry matters. She would mail the letter herself this time to make it sure.

 Mr. and Mrs. Schwarz were still talking angrily in the room overhead. Hilda gave a quick glance out the door. The men were all in the field working. She could identify each one. She slipped, softly up the stairs and locked herself into her room. Then, with hurried fingers, she wrote a penciled appeal:

“Dear Uncle Otto:

          “Won't you please, please send me money by telegraph, or at least by return mail, to come home? I cannot possible stay here any longer. There is something very queer about this place and the people. I haven't time to tell you now, but when I come home I will explain. I am sure you would not want me to stay if you knew all about it. There are a lot of dreadful men here, and I am frightened. I hope you won't be angry with me, and I hope you will send me the money at once. I can get a place to work and pay it back to you. Please hurry!”

 “Your affectionate niece,

HILDA LESSING.”

 Hastily addressing the letter she slipped it into her blouse and stole silently down the stairs again. A glance out the door showed the men still at work in the distance. She sped down the path toward the station as if on the wings of the wind. There would be a letter box at the station, of course.

 It never occurred to Hilda until she reached the station and mailed her letter that she would be in full view of Mrs. Schwarz's bedroom window, but when, after a hasty glance at the deserted little shanty of a station, noting that there was no sign of agent or telegraph office, she turned to come back, she suddenly became aware of two faces framed in the upper window of the house. Not anxious to anger her employer she quickened her steps, running as nimbly as possible over the rough ground, reaching the kitchen door without delay. But to her unspeakable dismay she saw Schwarz standing there glaring out at her, his whole big frame filling the doorway, his face red and angry, the odor of liquor about him.

 “Where you pin?” he snarled.

 A frightened little smile of apology trembled out on Hilda's white lips:

 “I've just been down to mail a letter that I wanted to have go this morning. It didn't take me a minute. I mustn't trouble you every time I have a letter to mail,” she explained.

“You don't go down to that station mitout permission! You onderstandt?” he thundered.

 “Oh, very well,” said Hilda, dropping her lashes with a dignified sweep, though she was trembling with indignation and terror. There was something about the whole domineering make-up of Schwarz that made her think of a mailed fist.

Schwarz, with something akin to a growl, stood aside to let her pass in and she fled upstairs to her room, where she stayed behind a locked door until she heard him go down the path to the station. Her heart was fluttering wildly, and tears of bitterness were on her cheeks. It was some minutes before she could calm herself enough to return to the kitchen.

 She had been at work not more than five minutes when she saw through the open door that Schwarz was striding back over the furrows to the house.

Her instinct was to flee again, but the peremptory commands of Mrs. Schwarz about putting on the vegetables for dinner held her at her post.

 There was something belligerent in Schwarz's attitude as he entered the kitchen and strode over to the stove. In his hand he carried an open letter and, he gave her a vicious look as he opened the stove lid and stuffed the letter in, shutting down the lid again and striding out.

 Hilda lifted her hands from the water in which she had been washing the cabbage and looked after him in sudden alarm. Then she sprang to the stove and lifted the lid. A flame rushed up to meet the draught and enveloped the paper, but not before she had read the words: “Dear Uncle Otto”; and “There is something strange about this place.”

Trembling, she shut down the stove lid and a great despair seized her. She was then a prisoner in this house so far as any hope of writing to her friends for help was concerned! Mr. Schwarz had opened the post box and taken out her letter and read it! He had dared to do that! He did not intend that she should write any complaints to her friends. But how did he get the box open? She was sure it was a regular post office letter box such as they always have at stations. Of course, he might have been appointed station master. He probably was, as there did not seem to be any other official there. But it was a state's prison offence to open a letter! Didn't he know that? She had learned that when she was a very little girl. But perhaps he knew he had her in his power and did not care. Already she felt the iron grip of the hand that ruled this desolate household. One look in his eye was enough to know he was not troubled by any law of courtesy or kindness, or any sense of what was due to women under his protection. Protection! What a farce that word seemed when applied to him, with his little pig eyes and his cruel jaw. The cold truth slowly sank into her soul. She was in a terribly situation and there was no connection with the outside world. She must work her way out somehow and get away. The conviction that it would be no easy task and that there was a long, strong hand concealed about this farm somewhere that could and would reach out to bring her back if she attempted to run away; and that then her fate would be worse than at present, kept her from crying out and running through the open door at once, away down the track to the freedom of the world. Some intuition taught her that if she would elude these terrible people, people who were somehow mysteriously connected with the great German nation now at war with the United States, that she must not anger them nor let them suspect that she was aware of their attitude toward her. She must act out the stupidity that they now believed of her. It had been bad that Mr. Schwarz had discovered that she thought there was something strange about this place. He would begin to watch her. He would think she was not so stupid as she had at first seemed, and would perhaps set the men to guarding the house lest she escape. At any rate, she could not escape by daylight, that was certain. She must have time to think and plan. She had enough knowledge of the world to know that a girl alone without money and friends was in frightful danger. She must not move until she had thought out every detail. Meantime, she must be meek and innocent and go about her work.

So she stilled her frightened heart as she heard Mrs. Schwarz come heavily down the stairs, and went briskly about her work. There was something strange about the atmosphere of the place, something intangible that got hold of the inmates. Hilda felt it. It gripped her and kept her from rebelling, kept her silent under the scathing tongue of her mistress; made her efface herself when the men came into the house. It seemed to hang about in the air and give her a helpless feeling that she must succumb —that nothing could help her out of this, that she was only a woman against a great power. Hilda had never felt anything like it before. She was a spirited girl and had ideas of her own, but now she felt as if they were gradually being paralyzed, and she would be compelled to let her will lie inert while she did the will of these stony-hearted people. Something in her struggled wildly against this state of things, but she was kept so busy that she had no time to think; and when the work was done bodily weariness was so great that she could not plan a way out of things; and so several days passed with no let-up and no hope. A strange non-resistance to the inevitable was stealing over her. Sometimes as she was dropping off to sleep she would know that if she could only be rested enough she could rise above this and plan a way out. There was just one thing she waited for and that was the end of the month, when she might hope to get her wages, and then she could quietly take her leave. She had not been told how much her wages were to be, but they would surely be enough to take her back to Chicago, or at least to some town where she could get a decent place to stay until she could find work. Sometimes, as she was going about her work, she would try to plan how little she could get along with, and once she summoned courage to ask Mrs. Schwarz how much she was earning a week, but the woman only stared with an ugly laugh and said:

“I know nodding about it. Zumetimes I think you do nod earn your salt.”

And with that she went out of the room.

Hilda thought about it awhile and concluded that Mr. Schwarz managed all those matters, so that night she went to him.

“Vages!” He roared. “I pay you no vages! It iss enough that I give you a good home. You should pe thankful for that! You are not worth vages!”

Hilda, with flaming cheeks, opened her mouth to protest, to say that Uncle Otto had told her there would be good wages, but when she looked into the fierce, cunning eyes of the man, her very soul quaked. Something that would have protested two weeks before had crumpled up within her and she saw herself precipitately retiring to the kitchen from the roaring of his angry tongue.