The Prodigal Girl (4 page)

Probably the deal that he had hoped for so long had fallen through, and she knew that that meant a great loss of money. But he would pull out of it. He always did. And he was yet a vigorous man, young for his years, and keen in business ability, beloved and respected. All would be right. All she had to do was to soothe him now for a little while. If he would only fall asleep—She heard his voice calling her impatiently: “Where is Betty? Why doesn’t she come down at once?” The mother hastened down with a placating air: “Chester, I’m afraid she’s gone, but she ought to be back before very late. Suppose you just lie down here and tell me all about it. You know that always makes things better—” But he interrupted her:

“Gone? Where has she gone!” There was alarm in his voice and in the startled eyes he turned on her.

“Why, you see, Chester, she had plans this evening—”

“Yes, I believe she told me so,” he shouted, “but I told her at the table that she was to stay at home!”

“Hush, Chester, the maids will hear you! Let me explain. You see, Chester, she really
couldn’t
stay at home. It was an engagement of two weeks standing. She had promised!”

“Couldn’t!”
he said, his voice still loud with alarm and excitement. “Couldn’t obey her father? Well, I’d like to know why not?”

“Why, because there were other people involved. Chester, you really didn’t give her any chance to explain, you know, and it was getting late. You remember you kept us waiting for dinner—”

“Involved? Who else was involved? Where has my daughter gone? I want to understand this thing perfectly. Where
is
Betty?”

“Why, Chester!” said his wife, aghast. She had not seen her husband so roused in years. He must be losing his mind.

“Listen, dear, she has only gone to a little high school dance. She’ll probably be home before long now. They don’t usually stay very late.”

“But why should that be more important than obeying her father?”

“Because she had promised to go with one of the boys, one of her classmates, and she couldn’t leave him without a partner.” He wheeled on her.

“Who
has she gone with?”

“Why, Chester, how strangely you act! Just one of the boys she has known all her life.”

“WHO?”

“Only Dudley Weston, our neighbor,” said the mother complacently, sure that the name would cool her husband’s heated temper. But his eyes fairly blazed.

“Dudley Weston!” he cried, and his voice was like a moan. “That little
viper!”

“Why, Chester! Now I’m sure you must have a fever or something. It is only yesterday you told me he was growing into a fine manly fellow, and said how handsome he was as he went down the street.”

The man groaned.

“Well, I don’t think so anymore. Betty might as well have gone with the devil from hell.”

“Now, Chester, you are swearing! I never heard you swear before.

Oh, what shall I do?”

But he paid no heed to her words. He was searching behind the hall table for his hat that had fallen on the floor.

“Where
is
that dance?” asked Betty’s father.

“It is at the high school hall,” said Mrs. Thornton. “Oh, Chester! What are you going to do? You are not going
after
her? You are not going in public to mortify our daughter! Our little Betty! Oh, Chester! She will never forgive you! She won’t come! I’m sure she won’t come. She is very angry at you already. If you do a thing like that you will alienate her forever. Chester, you
mustn’t!”

She was crying now, great tears rolling down her cheeks, though she seemed unaware of them. She caught hold of his coat and held him with all her slender strength.

Something in her frail sweetness and agony touched him even in his wrought-up state. He looked down at her, and for a moment his eyes softened with deep pity and tenderness.

“Listen, Eleanor, you don’t understand. You must trust me in this. I know what I’m about. And our Betty is in terrible danger. That boy is rotten! I heard him talking tonight in the train! About our Betty! Saying unspeakable, loathsome things about her! Oh, I would have saved you this if possible. He was boasting—I can’t tell you all, not now anyway, there isn’t time. I must get Betty before it is too late. Where is Jane? Call Jane. I want her to stay with you.
Jane!”

He sprang up the stairs and flung her door wide, but there was no Jane there. He turned to his wife who had come stumbling up the stairs after him, the tears still flooding her face.

“Where is Jane?” he asked now with that strained white look about his eyes returning.

“She has just gone over to Emily Carter’s to study her lessons. She asked me if she might go. They often study together. She’ll be home by nine o’clock.”

He glanced at his watch.

“Nine o’clock! Why, it’s past nine now! I’ll just step around and bring her back. I don’t like her running around the streets at this hour of the night even a block. She’s too young, and there are too many devils around. Besides, I want her to stay with you.”

Then with sudden tenderness he stooped and kissed her.

“Don’t cry, Eleanor. I didn’t mean to be harsh. But you didn’t understand. It was pretty bad and shook me a good deal, but we’ll pull out of this somehow.”

Then he was gone out into the night, leaving his wife with the worst alarm in her heart she had had in all the years of her married life. What would Betty do now? And what might not Chester do, when he found that Betty would not obey him in public? She recalled all the recent lectures on child rearing and sat weakly down on the lower step of the stairs and wept again.

Then out from the little front room near the linen closet at the end of the hall where Johnny had his haunts there arose a raucous voice singing from Johnny’s radio:

“I’m a little boy
,

And I love a little girl!”

And the mother on the stairs wept and wondered what the lecturer would tell her to do under the circumstances.

Chapter 3

T
he Carters lived halfway down the next block.

Thornton reflected that he had better take the car to save time. He could explain to Jane on the way home that her mother was feeling worried about something, and he wanted her to stay up with her till he returned. Then he could drop her at the door and drive right on to the high school.

But when he stopped at the Carters’ door he was surprised to find the house all dark, both upstairs and down. Probably the children were up in some back sitting room studying, or in Emily’s bedroom. He frowned anxiously as he rang the bell and waited impatiently. It seemed terrible to think that Betty had gone off with that unspeakable boy! And how was he to go about it to explain it to her? He would probably have to let her mother do it. It would be such a humiliation for his delicate-minded Betty to hear the foul words that had been used about her. Perhaps a hint from her mother would be sufficient without having to humble her by having her father tell his awful experience. That would have to be her mother’s part. His was to deal with the lad.

He brought his mind back from his unhappy reflections to ring the doorbell again. Surely these people had not retired at half past nine! And if so, what had become of Jane?

He rang a third time, this time prolonging the pressure until he could hear the distant whir of the bell from the front steps.

A window was pushed up slowly above his head, and a voice called casually.

“Who down dar? What you-all want? Ain’t nobuddy hum ‘cept jes me an the baby.”

“I’m Mr. Thornton,” explained Chester. “I’ve come for my daughter, Jane. Won’t you tell her to come right down? I’m in a hurry.”

“Her ain’t hyear no moh! Her ‘n’ Em’ly went out som’ers. Said they wuz goin’ down t’ the drugsto’ at the cohneh fer a soda. Reckum they’ll return d’reckly. But you cawn’t nevvah tell. Mistah Cahteh an’ his wife don’ gon’ ta town ta the
thee
-a-tre, an’ Em’ly she gene’lly does as she please when dey out. I can’t be bothahd! You jes’ try the drugsto’ ef yoh wants yoh gal in a hurry. Mebbe yoh find her! I gotta go back. The baby’s cryin’!”

The window went down with a slam.

A sudden sense of fury descended upon Chester Thornton. Why did all these things have to happen to him at once! Just when things were looking up and everything was hopeful! Here was life in a terrible mess! Little Jane, too! Just a baby! Wandering around the streets at night with another child. He never did like those Carters. They were common!
Common!
That’s what they were! Or the girl would know better than to take another child out alone at night.

He climbed wrathfully into the car and stepped furiously on the gas, startling a furtive cat into a streak of shadow.

Now, where should he look for Jane in case she was not at the drugstore? But perhaps Jane had already gone home. Yes, of course, that was it. Jane wouldn’t go to corner drugstores alone at night. Jane knew she was to go home. That was the explanation. She had been told to return at nine o’clock. She was not common herself, even if she did like to go sometimes with a common child. Probably it was not in the least necessary for him to hunt further; of course she had gone home, and he had missed her in the dark. Nevertheless, now that he was here he would make sure.

He parked his car hastily in front of the brightly lighted store, and leaving the engine going he sprang out to look in the window.

There was a crowd in the drugstore. The soda fountain was always popular of course at this hour of the evening, even in winter. The nearby college and prep school supplied a continuous flow of patrons.

Thornton stopped at the window, lowered his head to look under a poster of a bold miss advertising a new brand of cigarettes, but the crowd inside the window was too close for him to get a good survey of the entire store. He went up the steps and flung open the door, and just as he did so the crowd parted to let out an elderly woman with a large bottle and an anxious air of haste. For an instant Thornton got a glimpse of an open space beyond the crowd, and a young delicate little face strangely familiar, whirling giddily before a circle of admiring spectators.

Almost instantly the crowd closed up again, and a noisy cheer followed. Several rough young voices called out familiarly:

“Go to it, kid!”

“Give us another one of those high kicks, Jane!”

With strange premonition Thornton pushed aside the crowd of college fellows that stood in his way and brought himself inside the circle of onlookers, unmindful of the resistance of the youths who blocked his way.

“Say, what’s your haste, old gent?” one flung up at him as he elbowed his way to the front.

And there was
Jane
, his little child Jane, with her short kilted skirt tucked up like a ballet girl, her delicate features aflame with excitement, a bold, abandoned challenge in her big blue eyes, her close-cropped dark curls quivering, her bare childish knees above their rolled down stockings flashing white against the dark background of the mahogany showcase. Jane, dancing in solo, to the clamor of a jazzy radio in some unseen depth of the store’s recesses. Jane, dancing for the amusement of a score of lustful-eyed youths who watched her all agog and cheered her on with none-too-delicate phraseology. Seemingly regardless, she danced on light as thistledown yet vulgarly suggestive in a dance that might have had its origin in the slums.

As her father entered upon the scene Jane was in the midst of an intricate whirl of arms and legs, white knees all mixed up with rippling skirts and flying arms, white hands fluttering, one dark lock of hair longer than the rest, waving like a crest over the pretty forehead. Her vivid little face with its forward impudent smile flashed back and forth so rapidly that for an instant Thornton did not know his own child. Then, as the shaft of bitter assurance entered his soul, she finished with several high kicks and a lazily graceful handspring, coming upright with shining eyes and glowing cheeks and a little saucy tilt of triumph, openly aware of the admiration of her audience.

The irreverent onlookers broke forth into coarse jests and cheers once more, raised neglected cigarettes, and quickly wove a blue haze of smoke about their favorite; they gathered closer about her, reaching for her with bold, intimate hands.

Suddenly they fell back and a hush came over them all. Jane had seen her father!

Jane’s delicate little features grew suddenly drawn and mature. Jane’s big dark eyes stood out in her little white face, the color ebbed away, and a kind of panic of fright spread over her face. Even the shell-pink ears, so carefully uncovered by the barber’s shears, so boyish in their bareness, were white as if they were dead. Jane stood and stared at her father, for she had never seen such a look on his face as she saw now. Not at least since the day in her babyhood when she had put her mother’s diamond ring down the sewer pipe in the street, and her father had taken her to his study and given her the soundest spanking she ever remembered to have had. Jane stood still in her tracks and watched him come, felt a sudden leadenness in her knees and hands, and wished for a nice convenient hole to open through that tessellated marble floor and let her down anywhere; she did not in the least care where.

Emily Carter, standing at the soda fountain counter with a young man almost twice her age, sucking soda through a double straw, watched him come and giggled excitedly. The crowd of college boys with a sprinkling of prep boys, away without leave to purchase cigarettes, saw the fright in their favorite’s eyes, and a long low murmur like a young menace swept among them; but Chester Thornton came on with two long strides and gripped his daughter by the arm.

Without a word he led her out, her boyish head held high, a side sweep of frightened grimace on her face turned toward her former audience.

One or two of the bolder boys tried to step in his way and protest against the removal of their entertainer, but Chester Thornton swept them aside as if they had been made of cardboard, and took Jane out to the car.