The Prodigal Girl (23 page)

They were all members of the church, the whole family, himself an elder. They entertained the other elders once a year, royally; he always contributed generously, loaned their car, and sent flowers and cake to whatever was going on. They even sang in special choirs on occasion and helped decorate the church for holidays and holy days. And yet, they had made themselves
vile!
That phrase kept repeating itself over and over in his weary brain. “Thy sons have made themselves vile! Thy house shall not be purged by sacrifice nor offering for ever!” He had forgotten Eli. He seemed to hear the words spoken to himself.
Thy sons! Thy children!
At times it came over him with overwhelming shame.

So, tonight, when Betty had gone upstairs and all was still, a kind of gray, ashen look came over the father’s face. He was hearing those words again: “Thy children have made themselves vile! Thy house shall not be purged with sacrifice nor offering for ever!”

Chapter 17

E
leanor had gone up early to bed with the younger children. She looked utterly worn out. Chester knew that the scene at the supper table had not rested her. These things pierced her like a sword. Eleanor loved peace and loved to see the children happy. It distressed her beyond measure to have dissension. He could see that every word that Betty spoke had hurt her.

Chris was in the woodshed, with a lamp on the high shelf by the door, pounding and sawing away at a dollhouse he was trying to make for Doris for Christmas. He seemed to be fairly interested, and that was something to be thankful for. Jane had locked herself in her room professing to be working at Christmas presents also, and there was no longer need to keep up an appearance of cheerfulness. Chester slumped in an old rocking chair by the stove, the gray look overspreading his face like a fast-traveling cloud that was blotting out the light.

He sat for a long time with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands, seeing things he had never seen before, feeling his need of something that he had never missed before, feeling his utter helplessness, unable to bear the weight of his little girl Betty’s defection.

The chair in which he sat had been the one in which his mother had rocked her babies long ago. She had put those gentle, loving arms around them; he could feel the frailty of them now, so slender and so warm and so tender, and yet so strong, holding his little hot body when he had a fever, her fingers touching the burning forehead, so cool, so dear! He had felt so safe in her arms, his little gentle frail mother! If he only could go to her now, kneel before this same chair, put his aching head in her lap and pour out his troubles!

And she had sent him word down through the years to go to the Book she had left, for guidance! Well, he had gone, and it had only brought him condemnation. Utter, hopeless condemnation! He groaned aloud, and Betty, lying wide eyed above the big old base burner with its upstairs drum to warm her room, heard the groan through the echoing stovepipe and stared and shrank. Was that her dad, groaning like a woman? Heard and despised him for it. Heard and hardened her fierce, rebellious young heart. He had no right to act like that! He had no right to be so old fogeyish and care that way about things nobody else believed in anymore!

Half an hour later as she lay in her bed, still staring at the dark ceiling, still thinking bitter thoughts about him, she heard his footsteps coming slowly up the stairs. He stopped at her door and opened it gently, listened a moment, and spoke:

“Betty, are you asleep?”

Betty stirred and coughed. She could not think how to reply. Something in her soul refused to let her answer directly.

He came over beside the bed and touched her gently on the forehead.

“Betty, little girl,” he said, and his voice was very tender, the way she remembered it when she was a tiny child. “Your father loves you!” His voice was wistful. “I’ve been thinking about it, child, and I’m afraid I haven’t been the right kind of a father to you!”

Of all things! What a horrible thing to say! That was sob stuff! That was against the code. Her father talking
mush
like that!

“Shall we begin again, little girl, and try to straighten things out, try to understand and help each other?”

“Don’t!” said Betty, jerking away from his touch. “Don’t!” in a sob that was almost a scream and burst into angry hysterical tears, flinging herself as far away from him as she could get and letting the great sobs rack her slim young body.

Her father stood there in the dark room, with the light from the hall casting a long, bright finger sharply on the floor through the crack under the door. He waited, hoping she would turn back, perhaps answer him, when the storm of tears should have passed. But the shaking sobs went on, and before long he went round to the other side of the bed and, stooping, kissed the bit of hot, wet forehead between the guarding fingers, and so passed out of the room.

And Betty lay and sobbed and hated her father for bringing back that awful feeling of the presence of God in the room, God standing out there in the middle of the dark room, condemning her! God!—and there
wasn’t
any God! Everybody said so nowadays. Just everybody!

She cried harder. She felt that she would like to take poison or something just to show them how she hated it all. There was a fierce resentment in her wild, uncontrolled nature. She had her own life to live, and they should not hinder her. She felt if this kind of thing went on that she would not be able to go away with Dudley Weston. And yet she
would!
Nothing should hinder her now! This was a perfectly awful place, all shut in by fierce cold and snow, and God out there in the middle of the room looking at her in the dark. God! When there really
wasn’t
any God at all!

The next day the morning mail brought trouble. A telegram that had been put in the mail and brought up by a neighbor passing that way. There was word from the bank. Chris had forged a check for two hundred dollars! Chris was closeted with Chester for two hours in the little room off the sitting room. He came out at last with red rims around his eyes and a more shamed look than ever on his hard, young face; came out hastily and hurried into the woodshed where he was heard for a long time chopping kindling.

Eleanor had been openly weeping, and nothing was said about the new regime of work. Indeed Eleanor made no move toward getting the midday meal. She went to her room and lay down with the door shut. Jane, loitering to ask a question about something she was trying to sew for one of the boys for Christmas, thought she heard a sob, and came away.

“Oh, heck!” she said, doing a handspring on the kitchen floor for Doris’s benefit. “I wish we could go home. This place is rotten!”

Chester went down to the village, walking because there was no other transportation at this hour. The gray look on his face had deepened perceptibly. He seemed twenty years older. It was nearly four o’clock when he came back; everybody was hungry, and nobody knew what it was all about. Chris had gone out to the barn after he finished chopping the wood and remained there. He did not come back to the house till his father came home. He slipped in then and up to his room like a rabbit trying to get by without notice.

Betty came down about noon and began a few works of virtue. Everybody had gone crazy. They should see that she was sane.

She washed the dishes and straightened the dining room. Then she made some toast and scrambled some eggs for the children. That was about the extent of her culinary knowledge. She had never had time to learn anything more. There had been too many dances and high school plays and basketball games.

She felt most virtuous when she had finished. She reflected that it would be good to leave a sweet savor of good works behind her when she went. She had a generous, forgiving spirit toward her parents this morning. They never had been young—at least it was so long ago. And anyway, life had scarcely been worth living in their day. Such prudish, impossible notions! She wondered what could be the matter with Chris. But even Jane’s most accomplished snooping failed to make plain the cause of Chris’s depression, and when she finally dared to waylay him on the stairs during one of his restless excursions out to the barn and ask him what was “eating” him, he pushed her roughly aside and said:

“Aw, nothing! Shut up, won’t ya? Yer a pain in the neck! A fella can’t take a step without finding you underfoot!”

The telephone had been installed, and Chester Thornton retired into the library and carried on long conversations with “long distance.” But the room was not under any of the bedrooms nor near any of the stovepipes, which carried sound so beautifully, and not one word of the low-voiced communications leaked out to the curious children. Nor did the heavy oak doors that shut their father and their brother in give away any secrets.

Chris slid in furtively and stayed hours with his father. An occasional tinkle of the telephone bell gave sign that something important must be going on. When the two came out for meals Chester was grave and preoccupied, and Chris wore a white, frightened look.

Nor was Eleanor any more communicative. When Jane, who was the boldest of the group, attempted to question her, she answered, “Oh, just business. You wouldn’t understand.”

Three days like this went by, depression in the very atmosphere, Eleanor giving a low-voiced question when Chester came to meals, or maybe a mere lifting of the eyebrows that seemed to mean “Have you heard yet?” and Chester answering by a mere negative movement of his eyes, scarcely perceptible.

It was terrible! Betty wished she had said she would come at once to Briardale. She could have sold something—her watch, perhaps— her precious platinum watch! Anything to get away from this terrible place! It seemed as if the judgment day was about to dawn upon them all.

To add to the general gloom there was a thaw, and mist and steam began to ascend to a gloomy threatening sky with intermittent sunshine. Nobody went down to skate, nobody went down to the village. The sled that Chris and his father had found and had been repairing for family sledding stood dismantled in the woodshed with one runner off. There was nothing left for Betty to do but dress Doris’s doll and throw together an outfit for herself from the old chests in the attic. Betty did a great deal of ransacking in those days, unearthing some most interesting garments. Her mother was entirely too preoccupied to notice when she asked if she might have them, so Betty had a free hand with several rare old dresses and primped and pinned and cut and slashed to her heart’s delight. Jane, meanwhile, was also conjuring Christmas presents out of old things from the attic. And occasionally Betty, between outfits, worked awhile at Doris’s doll, making many lace ruffles on green silk for its party dress.

Doris and John were the only really happy members of the family. They made endless snowmen and snow houses and snow forts, and reveled in the great out-of-doors, coming in with rosy cheeks and shining eyes to get a handful of unguarded cookies or doughnuts when driven by hunger, and back again to the fray.

But at last there came a day a little after noon when the door of the closed room suddenly opened and Chris came out with his old brisk manner. Not closing the door carefully with that funeral-in-the-house air that he had been doing.

Betty was in the dining room setting the table for lunch because she was hungry and hoped it would bring her mother downstairs to suggest something about lunch if she jingled the dishes loud enough.

Betty had a strong conviction that her mother was up in her bedroom most of the time praying. Not that Eleanor had up to this point been inclined to much obvious prayer, but Jane had burst into the room one morning and found her kneeling by her bed and reported that her face was all red and tear stained. Eleanor always came downstairs with that wistful, unhappy look in her eyes that Betty naturally connected with prayer. Why should one pray unless one was in a terrible strait? What could be the matter? Business couldn’t be so awful that they would feel it like that! Why, one could always get a new business if the old one failed. And besides, what could Chris have to do with that? He was too young to help in business.

Betty heard Chris come out of the old library and go upstairs with a spring, two steps at a time. He sounded almost as if he was whistling. Yes, that was a whistle. He was stamping around his room and opening and shutting closet doors and bureau drawers, and
whistling!
Betty drew a sigh of relief.

Then Eleanor came swiftly down the stairs and went into the library, just as Chester was coming out. His face looked as if a great burden had rolled off from his shoulders, and Betty heard her mother exclaim, “Oh, thank the Lord!” and then she saw her put her face down on her husband’s shoulder and cry. Betty hurried into the kitchen and stood looking out of the window at the distant mountains overhung with clouds, and just as she was watching, the sun burst through and sent golden bars down through the purply gray and blue of the sky.

Then Chris came clattering down the back stairs and greeted his sister for the first time in four days.

“Hello, Betts!”

Betty turned a disturbed face on him:

“What’s the matter, Chris? For Pete’s sake, tell me!” she pleaded.

“Absolutely nothing!” declared Chris joyously. “Everything’s okay.
Absotively!
Say, Betts! Aren’t there any doughnuts left or something? I’m holla as a log, an’ I gotta beat it down ta the village with a business letter fer Dad. It’s gotta go on the next train. Get me something, can’t ya? Something I can take in my hand. Where’s the rest of that apple pie, that’ll do. And gimme a hunk of cheese! Thanks awfully. Dance at yer wedding and all that sorta thing!” He was gone into the front part of the house. She could hear him breezing into the library and calling out excitedly to his father in his old confident tone.

But Betty stood still in the pantry; the dishcloth she had been holding in her hand dropped to the floor. Now why did Chris say that about dancing at her wedding? She felt weak and upset. Of course Chris hadn’t an idea about her plans. He just said it. It didn’t mean a thing. But it certainly did make her head reel.