An ominous silence in the house greeted her as she hung up the receiver and turned away. What could Stephen be up to, now? She had not heard a sound from him for some time. That was always alarming from Stephen.
“Stephen!” She called quickly and stood listening for an answer, her fine dark brows drawn together tensely.
The house waited emptily with her for the answer which did not come.
“Stephen!” she shouted, turning so that her voice would carry up the stairs.
“Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick—” whispered the little mantelpiece clock hurriedly in the silence.
She was rarely quiet enough to hear that sound, but when it did come to her ears, it always said pressingly, “So much to do! So much to do! So much to do!”
She looked at it and frowned. Half-past two already! And that floor only half scrubbed. What possessed people to call you up on the telephone at all hours? Didn’t anybody realize what she had to do!
“Stephen!” she called irritably, running upstairs. Was there anything more exasperating than to have a child not answer when you called? Helen and Henry had never dreamed of that when they had been his age. It was another one of his naughty tricks, a new one! He had a new one every day. And he always knew just when was the worst possible time to try one on. The water in her scrubbing pail was cooling off all the time and she had just filled up the reservoir of the kitchen stove with cold, so that she couldn’t have another pailful of hot for an hour.
“Stephen!” The thought of the cooling water raised the heat of her resentment against the child.
She looked hastily into the spotless bathroom, the bedroom where Stephen’s smooth white cot stood by his parents’ bed, into Henry’s little dormer-windowed cubbyhole—there! Henry had left his shoes in the middle of the floor again!—into Helen’s room where a great bias fold in the badly made bed deepened the line between her eyes.
Still no Stephen. It was too much. With all she had to do, slaving day and night to keep the house nice for them all who never thought of appreciating it, never any rest or change, her hair getting thinner all the time, simply coming out by handfuls, and she had had such beautiful hair, so many things to do this afternoon while Mattie was out, enjoying herself, riding in a new car, and now everything stopped because of this naughty trick of Stephen’s of not answering.
“Stephen!” she screamed, her face darkly flushed. “Tell me where you are this minute!”
In that tiny house he must be quite within earshot.
But the tiny house sent back not the faintest murmur of response. The echo of her screaming voice died away to a dead silence that closed in on her menacingly and laid on her feverish, angry heart the cold touch of terror.
Suppose that Stephen were not hiding from her! Suppose he had stepped out into the yard a moment and had been carried away. There had been those rough-looking men loitering in the streets yesterday—tramps from the railroad yards. … Oh, and the railroad yards so close! Mrs. Elmore’s little Harry killed there by a freight-train. Or the river! Standing there in the dark upper hall, she saw Stephen’s little hands clutching wildly at nothing and going down under that dreadful, cold, brown water. Stephen, her baby, her darling, the strongest and brightest of them all, her favorite. …
She flew down the stairs and out the front door into the icy February air, calling wildly: “Stephen! Stevie! Stevie, darling!”
But the dingy street was quite empty save for a grocer’s wagon standing in front of one of the little clapboarded houses. She ran down to this and asked the boy driving it: “Have you seen Stephen since you turned into the street? You know, little Stephen Knapp?”
“No, I ain’t seen him,” said the boy, looking up and down the street with her.
A thin old woman came out on the front porch of the house next to the Knapp’s.
“You haven’t seen Stephen, have you, Mrs. Anderson?” called Stephen’s mother.
“No, I haven’t see him, Mrs. Knapp. I don’t believe he’d go out this cold day. He’s just hiding on you somewhere. Children will do that, if you let them. If he were my child, Mrs. Knapp, I’d cure him of that trick before he so much as started it—by the shingle method too! I never used to let my children get ahead of me. Once you let them get the start on you with some. …”
Mrs. Knapp’s anxious face reddened with resentment. She went back to her own house and shut the door behind her hard.
Inside she began a systematic search of every possible hiding place, racing from one to another, now hot with anger, now cold with fear, sick, sick with uncertainty. She did not call the child now. She hunted him out silently and swiftly.
But there was no Stephen in the house. He must have gone out! Even if he were safe, he would be chilled to the bone by this time! And suppose he were not safe! If only they didn’t live in such an abominable part of the town, so near the railroad yards and the slums! Her anger dropped away. She forgot the barb planted in her vanity by old Mrs. Anderson. As she flung on her wraps, she was shivering from head to foot; she was nothing but loving, suffering, fearing motherhood. If she had seen her Stephen struggling in the arms of a dozen big hoodlums, she would have flown at them like a tigress, armed only with teeth and claws and her passionate heart.
Her hand on the doorknob, she thought of one last place she had not searched. The dark hole under the stairs. She turned to that and flung back the curtain.
Stephen was there, his Teddy-bear clutched in his arms, silent, his round face grim and hard, scowling defiantly at her.
