A Bright Tomorrow (2 page)

“Don't start on her, Will,” Marian said quickly. She sat down at the foot of the table and bowed her head. The rest followed her example, and she prayed, “Oh, God, we thank thee for this food and for every blessing. And this morning, we ask that thou wouldst give traveling mercies to the children…and set thine angels to watch over Lylah as she leaves us. Keep her safe from all harm, for we ask it in the name of Jesus.”

As soon as the prayer was over, Owen looked around the table. “I'll be danged, Ma, if you ain't outdid yourself this time!”

Marian smiled, and as the family tore into eggs, sausage, grits, biscuits, and pancakes with blackstrap syrup—she picked at her own food. She let her eyes roam around the table, studying each face:

Will Stuart—as restless and unstable as the wind—he can play any instrument, but he can't control himself.
Marian concentrated on her husband's handsome features, thinking of how he could be so charming, but with so little resistance to temptation. He was welcome at all the musicals and play parties and dances, she knew, for he was a fine musician and had a splendid tenor voice.
If he worked as hard as he played, he'd be a fine man,
Marian thought. He was sweet and thoughtful at times and worked for weeks without a break. But then, in one form or another, the weakness of his flesh would draw him down. Marian Stuart knew well the pitying looks she got from her friends…knew then that Will had been drunk or with another woman.

Marian shifted her gaze to her three oldest children. Amos, who was most like her, loved books the way a starving man loves food. But he loved his family more…enough to give up his chance at school to make a living out of the rocky soil that composed their hill farm. Marian felt his longings, this oldest son of hers.
He's got to have his chance
…
somehow he's got to have a chance!

And Owen—not a thinker like Amos, though bright enough—he was the hunter, the fisherman, the one who won all the races and wrestling matches among his boyhood crew. He was, Marian thought, a great deal like his father, but she thanked God that the boy had received Will Stuart's better characteristics. Marian noted the firm line of the boy's jaw, took in the steady eyes, and thought with relief,
He'll be all right. He's not like Will
…
at least, not yet.

There was Lylah, whose beauty frightened Marian, for she knew that beauty was a quality as dangerous as gunpowder to some women, and those who learned to use it could destroy a man as quickly as with a loaded pistol.
I wish she weren't so pretty,
Marian thought with pain.
She's going out into the world without God, and every man she sees will try to corrupt her.

Her gaze fell on the others, the young ones:

Logan, twelve years old, resembled his father, but there was a calm steadiness in him that was lacking in the other boys. He was the mechanical one—the fixer and the inventor. Marian's eyes ran over the serious face, then moved to Pete, aged ten.
Peter looks so much like my cousin, Jonathan,
Marian thought,
so tall but with the Stuart features.

And Lenora, only seven, already showed signs of looking like her mother—same ash-blond hair, but with hazel eyes. Tall for her age, the child already possessed a strong maternal instinct.

Gavin, the only one in the family with dark hair and almost black eyes, sat next to Lenora. He was five years old and a throwback to Will Stuart's grandmother. “The black Stuart,” he had been called, though he had the sunniest temperament of all the children.

Marian rose and went to pick up Christie, thirteen months. As she nursed her youngest, Marian admired the fine blond hair and the cornflower blue eyes regarding her solemnly.

Finally the meal was over, and Amos said, “I'll get the team hitched, Lylah. We've got a long trip, so get your stuff together.”

Will leaned back in his chair, protesting, “If she's got to go, I should be the one to take her.”

At once Marian said, “That fence on the north forty has got to be repaired, Will. We're going to lose stock if it isn't.”

“Well, let Amos do it.”

“No. Amos hasn't been to town for two years. He's worked hard, and he needs a little time off.”

The older children recognized that this meant:
You can't be trusted to go to Fort Smith alone, Will.
And Stuart got to his feet and stalked out of the room.

“You want me to stay, Ma?” Amos asked.

“No, son, you go with Lylah. You two have a good time.”

“Ma, let me go with them, please!” Owen begged.

Marian shook her head, but when she saw the sorrow on Owen's face, she changed her mind. “Well, I guess it won't hurt. You'll have to wear your best clothes, though, so go get ready.”

At once Logan and the other children let out a whoop of protest, but they understood shortly that it was in vain. Marian shooed them out from underfoot, and managed to have one moment with Lylah. She helped the girl put her scanty wardrobe into a suitcase borrowed for the occasion, and said wistfully, “I wish you had some nice things, Lylah.”

Lylah turned and hugged her mother. “Oh, Ma, it's all right!”

The two women held on to each other, for somehow both understood that this was a good-bye that covered more than a trip to Fort Smith.

The older woman voiced it. “You've not been happy here, Lylah. But I'm worried about you. The things you want so badly…they'll not make you happy, either.”

Lylah braced herself for another sermon, her lips thinning, but her mother only said, “I'll pray for you…every day, daughter.”

Lylah recognized her mother's inherent goodness, and a chill came over her as she thought of leaving the safety of this place. “Oh, Ma—I've got to go—I've
got
to!”

Marian held the girl close, smoothing her hair as she had not done for years. They stood there, and Lylah never forgot that moment. She little knew at that instant how many times she would go back and relive this scene, often with tears.

“I know you have to go,” Marian said and forced a smile onto her lips. “And we both know you don't know God. Maybe you'll meet him at the school. But I know you'll find God, because he's given me a promise. He gave it to me the morning you were born, Lylah. I was holding you for the first time, and the Lord dropped a word into my heart. He said, ‘This child will not have an easy way. She will wander far from me and from you. But I will bring her back. You will see her one day, a handmaiden of the Lord and a mother in Israel.'”

The words frightened Lylah. She'd never heard this before. But somehow it cheered her, too. “Try not to worry too much, Ma,” she begged. She wiped the tears from her eyes, and soon the two women moved out of the house, where Amos was just driving the team up to the front of the house.

Will Stuart came back from the barn, and in one of his swift mood changes, smiled at Lylah. He hugged her, reached into his pocket and brought out something which he put into her hand. “Buy yourself something pretty,” he whispered, and lifted her clear off the ground, her arms locked around his neck. “Don't forget the old man!”

Ten minutes later the wagon headed down the winding dirt road. Lylah looked back toward the house. All of them were waving, and she waved back, but then the timber closed in and she couldn't see them anymore. She sighed and settled into her seat between Owen and Amos.

“You sorry to be leaving?” Owen asked.

“Yes…but I've got to do it.”

Amos stared out over the heads of the mules, his eyes thoughtful. “Sure,” he said. “I know how it is, Sis.”

Lylah felt a stab of sorrow for this lean brother of hers. For years she had known that Amos longed to leave the farm, to find his place in the world. But he had chosen to stay, sacrificing himself for her and the family.

Gently she put her hand on his arm, then whispered, “You'll get away someday, Amos.”

He didn't answer, and the three of them rode down the rutted road, the harness jingling musically and the warm sun washing over them. Lylah was aware that there would never be a moment like this again—just the three of them. She wished that the journey would last forever, that she and Amos and Owen could be together always. But she knew that this was impossible, and she had to fight against a dark and foreboding fear that rose in her breast.

“Come on, now,” Amos said, noting Lylah's sadness. “You've got plenty of time to be sober with those Baptists. But first we're going to have a rip-roaring time in Fort Smith, right?”

“Right!” Lylah agreed, and put an arm around each of her strong brothers. “One rip-roaring time for the Stuarts!”

D
onald Satterfield was worried. He had been proud when the president of Bethany Institute had put him in charge of the group of students taking the trip to Little Rock for the annual meeting of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention in early December. He had glowed in the praise of Dr. Harry Barton: “Donald, you're the most reliable student at the institute. I know I can trust you to shepherd our young people well.”

Satterfield, a serious young man, took his task as a sacred trust, and the fifteen students in the group had not only attended the sessions where rousing sermons were preached, but those less-than-exciting meetings where business took place.

That the group had done so was a tribute to the popularity of the young evangelist. Most of them had emerged from the hills, as had Satterfield himself, and had never seen a city the size of Little Rock. They had been awed by Fort Smith, where the most dynamic sight was the gallows where Judge Isaac Parker had stretched the necks of almost a hundred desperados harvested from Indian Territory. But Little Rock boasted such marvels as electric streetcars and a building six stories high.

“That building will fall,” declared a bull-shouldered freshman ministerial student named Harold Pink. Pink was the one of whom the head of the Bible department had said, “Harold thinks the world's on fire, and he's the only one with a bucket of water!” Now, staring up at the red brick building that dominated Main Street, Pink added to his prophecy: “If God had intended for man to live in tall buildings, he'd never have put a stop to the Tower of Babel!”

But Don Satterfield had a far more serious problem than the shaky theology of a rather thick-headed freshman.

One of his sheep—the only female of the flock—was missing.

“Has anyone seen Lylah?” Satterfield rushed into the lobby of the First Baptist Church, his hair rumpled and his eyes filled with anguish. It was the last night of the convention, and when he had gone to the home of the family who had kept Lylah during the visit, he was told that she had left early. But the young minister had not found her at the church, and he yanked at his hair nervously, saying to the others, “She left the Whites' house in plenty of time to get here.”

“I told you how it would be, Brother Satterfield,” Pink said ponderously. “As the Scriptures say, ‘A wise man will attain unto counsel, but stripes are for the back of a fool.'” Having called his leader a fool in an acceptable manner, the burly youth nodded, seeming to take pleasure in being the harbinger of evil tidings. “She's probably wallowing in the fleshpots of this modern-day Sodom!”

“Oh, shut up, Harold!” Satterfield would not have spoken so roughly if he had not been so worried. He scanned the lobby frantically but saw nothing of Lylah. “You all go on in,” he said. “I'm going to wait out here until she comes.”

Henry Townes, Satterfield's second-in-command, was more reassuring. “Oh, she's just late, Don. You know how women are. You don't have to worry.”

But Townes was right on only one count; he missed two out of three. Lylah was certainly late, but Satterfield
didn't
know how women were. And if he had known where she had been all afternoon, he would have torn out his hair from worry!

With the possible exception of the state capitol, the Lafayette Opera House on Capitol Avenue was the most ornate building in Little Rock. A large imposing structure in the Victorian style, it had succeeded in luring to the city the better road companies that were criss-crossing the nation at the turn of the century. In earlier days, it had hosted such giants as Sarah Bernhardt, Lillian Russell, and even an aging Edwin Booth.

Many thousands had passed by the opera house since it rose to dominate the wide street that led to the capitol, but not one of them had been so strongly affected by it as had Lylah Stuart.

She had been bored with the convention, as she had known she would be, and it was to escape boredom that she had pestered Don Satterfield to include her in the group. He had thought it was his own idea, of course. “The experience will do her good” he had told the president, not realizing that Lylah herself, using her feminine wiles, had planted that idea in his mind.

Satterfield, who had been hopelessly in love with Lylah for years, was sincere enough. He had been disappointed that Lylah had taken so little interest in spiritual things at the Institute. Oh, she had done well enough academically, for she had a keen mind. She had even memorized the kings of Judah and Israel with the dates of their reigns, rattling them off carelessly when called on. But she had attended only those services required by the code of the school. Satterfield had never once succeeded in getting her to attend any of the all-night prayer meetings, nor even one of his own meetings in the smaller churches of the area.

Nor had he any idea of the crashing boredom Lylah Stuart was enduring! But Lylah was too smart to behave in a manner that would send her back home to slop razorback hogs. She was a clever girl and played the role of “student at Bible school” as she had played other roles. Her boast to Amos and Owen that she would set the institute on its ear by doing what she pleased was not the way, and she knew it.

But the empty years loomed before her, as they do for men and women in prison cells, and when the chance came to go to Little Rock she grabbed it. It took only a few soft words, a little pressure as she leaned against Don Satterfield, to get her way.

Her first train ride was thrilling. Snow began to fall as the train chugged toward Little Rock, and it was exciting to watch the dead-looking hills being transformed into smooth mounds of glittering white. The excitement of the train ride palled into nothingness, however, when Lylah passed by the opera house and saw the pictures plastered across the front of the building. She glanced up at the huge sign that read:

ONE ENGAGEMENT ONLY!
ROMEO AND JULIET
STARRING MAUDE ADAMS

Turning her avid attention to the playbill, Lylah studied the picture of the star. “Why, she's no older than I am!” she whispered aloud.

“And not nearly as pretty!”

Startled, Lylah turned to find herself facing a tall young man dressed in a thick fur coat. He was handsome, with chiseled features. When he took off his black bowler hat, he revealed a mass of black hair piled high in front in a pompadour. A pair of bold black eyes dominated his face, and when he smiled, Lylah knew she'd never seen such a perfect set of teeth!

“Miss Adams
is
, in fact, older than you are,” the man smiled, and then his eyes took on even more of a sparkle as he added, “but she certainly is not as attractive!”

Accustomed as she was to subduing the young men who fluttered around her, Lylah was suddenly a little breathless, for this man was no callow student! He was very tall, and the diamond he was wearing on his right hand flashed as he gestured. Assurance flowed out of him, and the young woman knew that this man was more dangerous than any she'd ever met.
He knows how to handle women the same as I know how to handle men,
Lylah thought.

But there was enough audacity in her to cause her to hold up her head and smile—she knew what
this
did to men!—and she murmured, “My mother taught me not to talk to strangers—especially to those who tell lies.”

The man threw back his head and laughed, delighted with her answer. “Your mother gives good advice,” he said, “but I haven't lied to you.”

“Yes, you have,” Lylah said quickly, motioning toward the picture on the wall. “I'm not as beautiful as that lady.”

“Have you ever seen her in person?”

“Well, no—”

“Well,
I
see her every day…and I swear on my grandfather's…nose,” he substituted quickly, “that Miss Adams would give a year's earnings to have your coloring and those eyes!”

Lylah stared at him, ignoring the compliment, and breathed, “You
see
Maude Adams every day? Are you…an
actor
?”

Again he laughed, then reached out and turned her around. “My feelings are hurt!” he said, and pointed to a picture just to the left of the star's.

Lylah read the name aloud: “James K. Hackett—” then examined the picture. “It's you!” she cried, and turned to face the actor.

“In person!” He bowed gracefully, then asked, “And you are—”

“My name is Lylah Stuart.”

“Well, Miss Stuart, I take it you haven't seen the play?”

“No, I haven't. Are you Romeo?”

“Well, no—” A frown creased his smooth forehead, and he bit his lips. “If justice were done, I
would
be in that role.” Then he flashed those white teeth. “But many critics say that the part of Mercutio is far better than that of Romeo. Do you agree?”

“Oh, I've never seen
any
play, Mr. Hackett!” Lylah protested.

His heavy black eyebrows shot up. “Never seen a play?” he said in astonishment. “I can't believe it! What have you been doing all your life?”

An impulse prompted Lylah to invent a story about being the daughter of a wealthy man who didn't like plays, but she was too smart and too honest for that.

“I've been feeding pigs,” she said with a sudden impish grin.

Her smile, Hackett found, was infectious. And she was a peach. He suddenly liked the girl's forthrightness. He shook his head. “My, that won't do! You'll have to come to the performance.”

“Oh, I can't afford it,” Lylah said at once.

“As my guest, of course.” Hackett smiled. He reached into his pocket and came out with one of the complimentary tickets the actors all received. “Front row center.” Seeing her reluctance, he added quickly. “After the performance I'd like to take you backstage to meet Miss Adams.”

A verse of Scripture flashed into Lylah's mind:
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it.

Lylah struggled, knowing that entering a theater was against all the laws of God she'd been taught. She was due at the church, and Don would be worried sick about her. Her mother would be grieved. No doubt there would be language that would offend the ears of a young lady. And certainly no green young girl should even
think
of putting herself under the power of a creature as attractive as James K. Hackett!

“I'll be honored to be your guest, Mr. Hackett,” Lylah agreed, after a spiritual struggle that lasted all of fifteen seconds.

“Fine! Now you just come along with me, and we'll have something to drink before I have to change—”

Quickly the minutes passed until the curtain went up. And from that instant, time ceased for Lylah Stuart.

For three hours the actors moved and spoke and fought and loved. Their strong voices flowed over the stage, the language of Shakespeare sometimes caressing Lylah's ears like sweet drops of rain on dry earth, other times falling like blows that crush and maim, as the Capulets and the Montagues raged at one another.

When Romeo got his first glimpse of Juliet, his words came to Lylah like magic:

And when Juliet, in the balcony scene, mourned that the one she loves is the sworn enemy of her family, Lylah wanted to cry out—

But it was in the death scenes that Lylah felt most keenly the power of poetry and drama. She did not know the play and supposed that somehow Romeo and Juliet would overcome all their difficulties and live happily ever after. When Romeo came to the tomb and found Juliet apparently dead, Lylah delighted in the first of the scene, especially the speech that Romeo made:

But when Romeo killed himself, Lylah was struck dumb, unable to speak, hardly able to think. To complete the tragedy, Juliet, finding the dead body of Romeo, stabbed herself with his dagger, crying out, “O happy dagger! This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die.”

Lylah began to weep, overcome by grief for the young lovers. And when Hackett found her, he was shocked to discover that the young woman had been so affected by the play.

“Why, Miss Stuart, what's this?” he whispered, taking both her hands. The tears were running down her cheeks, and the worldly actor thought he'd never seen anything more innocently beautiful in his life than the soft, damp eyes of Lylah Stuart!

“I can't…help it!” Lylah moaned.

“Well, now, you come and meet Miss Adams. She'll be flattered that her performance has been so effective.”

And so she was. Maude Adams, though only thirty years old, had received applause from royalty and admiration from many, but she was genuinely touched when she saw the trembling lips of the beautiful young girl. Realizing that Lylah was beyond speech, she took her hand, then kissed her on the cheek. “It's good to see that what I do on the stage has some power to move young people.”

“Oh, Miss Adams,” Lylah whispered, “it's the grandest thing there is!”

Maude Adams stared at the young woman, then shifted her gaze to Hackett. “Well, she certainly has the beauty for the stage, hasn't she?”

Lylah had dreamed all her life of something like this! She lifted her glorious eyes to Maude Adams and said, “I want that more than anything!”