The Prodigal Girl (6 page)

His car plunged on through the night, over ruts and humps without regard to its going, till he came at last to the high-arched gate with its single bright globe streaking across the dark of the road in a great gash of light above the dark winding drive that led by devious ways up to the inn.

Then caution suddenly seized him. He backed down into the shadow, parked his car as silently as possible, and proceeded on foot. As he trod the dry grass at the edge of the gravel making his footsteps as inaudible as possible, he began to think that it was going to be awkward to appear in that tavern and search for his daughter,
HIS DAUGHTER
! Supposing she was not there? He must let no one suspect that he even thought she was. He would have to be searching for someone else if he had to account at all for his appearance. He shrank inexpressibly from the ordeal. And yet it must be gone through with. If only he were sure whether she was really there; he could enter with more dignity. Perhaps there was a window unshuttered where he might look in and make sure, and possibly save being seen at all. It might be those high school children were entirely mistaken. Dudley Weston had perhaps taken some other girl to this abominable place, and his Betty might be even now at home asleep in her own bed. He must proceed slowly. It would not do to let even people who came to a place like this know that he feared Betty was here.

He dragged his heavy feet up the winding way till he came out on the level and was suddenly aware of a long line of cars parked in the dark edges of the drive. Somehow the sight of them brought a premonition. Was that—Could it be the Weston car? The last one in the line, parked boldly quite near the driveway?

Carefully, silently, he stole nearer, peering through the darkness. Yes, that was a Knowland, the same lines at least, and the taillight was out. So were the headlights. But he was sure about the car. He was used to seeing it go by his house every day. Perhaps he had better step up close to be positive. That would give him something to go on. Perhaps it would be well just to boldly go up to the door of the tavern and ask for Dudley Weston.

Thornton had taken the precaution to bring his flashlight from the car before he left it, and now as he stole toward this dark car his hand gripped it, ready for use when he should get close enough to see. One flash would make it plain. Besides, if he remembered rightly the Weston initials were on the door.

With the flashlight drawn and his finger on the switch, he crept close and raised the little lamp, but even as he did so he became aware of strong cigarette smoke and two red sparks glowing at him like two eyes from the backseat of the car.

It was too late to retreat, for the fingers had obeyed the order his brain had given, and his big searchlight blared out full in the faces of the two occupants, discovering to Thornton’s horrified gaze his daughter Betty lolling in the embrace of Dudley Weston and puffing away at a cigarette.

The flashlight went dark, and there was an angry stir in the backseat of the car. Two glowing sparks of lights sped through the darkness like fireflies and were extinguished in the grass on the far side of the car. Then two angry young people issued forth and confronted him: Dudley Weston and his daughter Betty!

There was nothing about his daughter to show either that she had been lured into the present situation against her will or that she was a penitent sinner brought to overwhelming judgment. Wrapped in a fur-trimmed velvet evening cloak, which Thornton recognized as his wife’s, she stood out against the blaring background of Todd’s illumination almost regally, her slim body drawn to its tallest, her little sleek head held haughtily, like an angry princess. She surveyed him, and her voice was cold like showers of icicles as her words buried their sharp points in her father’s heart:

“Well, Chester, what do you seem to think you’re up to now? It strikes me somebody had better keep an eye on you. I’m about convinced that you’ve taken leave of your senses! What’s the little old idea anyway?”

Then, suddenly confronted by her unbroken morale, Chester Thornton could think of nothing to say in reply. He even flashed the light upon her again, with an aimless idea that he had made a mistake somehow and this was not his Betty, his little girl, talking that way to him, not ashamed at all of what she had been doing! She bore the scrutiny of the light and his searching, pitiful, gaze without flinching. Her eyes were cold and hard, and her lips were scornful.

He tried to speak, and no sounds came from his parched throat.

Betty stepped coolly out of the spotlight and laid her hand on her companion’s arm:

“Come on, Dud, let’s go back and have another dance,” she said nonchalantly. “If Dad thinks he can pull anything like this he’s got another think coming. Let’s go!”

A laugh of triumphant defiance broke hoarsely from the young man as he turned to obey. But suddenly Chester Thornton’s senses were set free, and fury arose within him. Was this young reptile to defy him and lead his daughter away while he stood by? He had not forgotten the tricks he learned in college, and a quick well-directed blow under the chin sent young Weston sprawling on the hard bare ground to the utter astonishment of Betty, who whirled furiously on her father, a look in her eyes that was not good to see. It was a look that he was to remember long years after, a look like a blow that left a scar.

But Thornton was alert now and keyed up to the fighting point. He picked young Betty up in his arms as if she had been a feather and strode off down the hill.

Betty struggled furiously at first and then was still for an instant in sheer astonishment. When she began to struggle again, silently he held her like a vise.

“Look here, Chester, you needn’t think you can treat me like this. I won’t stand for it!” she defied him when she saw she could not get away.

But he strode on through the night without a word. “I’ll scream!” she said threateningly. “And then what will they think of
you?
There are plenty of people in that tavern, and they will come out and laugh at you. A silly old parent that thinks he has just come out of the ark!”

Still Thornton strode on down the hill. It was taking all his breath, between his anger and helplessness and the weight of his daughter, which he had by no means been training for during the years.

They were almost to the car, and Chester Thornton was wondering whether he could hold out, when Betty dealt her final blow.

In a cold, hard, matter-of-fact tone she said:

“Well, I
hate
you, and I’m
off you
for
life!”

The impact quivered through his trembling flesh like an actual blow. He realized that here was another thing with which he would have to live out the years, and never forget!

Betty! His little Betty! His first baby girl!

There was an instant’s struggle again as they reached the car. Betty was determined not to be carried home ignominiously. But he held her fast.

“Will you get in quietly, or shall I have to tie you?” he asked in a strange panting voice that somehow startled her in spite of her hardness.

“Oh, have it your own way,” she said, relaxing suddenly into indifference. “I’m getting terribly sleepy anyway and might as well go home.” She summoned a casual yawn.

How had the universe got turned around?
This
was his Betty! The child for whom he had but a few short hours before been planning an expensive Christmas surprise and exulting in her probable delight in it. How had all this awful change come about?

He tried as he drove along through the night to think of a wise mode of approach, for he must have it out with her before he reached home. He would have to tell her all those awful words that that foulmouthed boy had said. There was no way to spare her from it. She ought to know the truth. Her humiliation would have to be complete before she could be brought to her senses.

Betty was leaning back, feigning sleep.

Very gently, very tenderly, with the deep, hurt love in his voice and words chosen from the depths of his suffering heart he began:

“Betty, it is because I love you—” he started in a voice she used to love.

“Rot!” said Betty sleepily. “Save your breath, Chester. That kind of mush is out of date.”

Appalled, he summoned new words, sharp with truth, and began to tell her what he had heard in the train.

She listened through to the finish, and then her scornful laugh rang out like a flashing knife:

“Oh, is that all you’ve got on your chest?” she scorned. “I thought you were off your nut. But you’ve only got a Victorian complex after all. Poor Dad, you’ll recover, but you’ve lost out as far as I’m concerned. I thought you had an open mind!”

“Betty! What do you mean? Don’t you—Aren’t you—?”

“No, I don’t think Dud is a beast! No, I’m not shocked or humiliated or any of the other things you want me to be. This is an enlightened age, and things have changed since you were young. I have my doubts whether they were so very sanctimonious as you try to make out even then, but of course you want me to think they were. But as for Dud, he’s all right. He’s no worse than all of the rest of us. We’re just frank and honest. All the boys talk like that. That’s nothing. We’re just living our lives in the new free way, that’s all. You lived your life, and it’s our turn now to live ours as we please, and there’s no use in thinking we’re going to be tied now by any antiquated whims that people tried to kid themselves into a century ago, for we won’t do it.”

“My child!” he said sadly. “Right and wrong do not change. God is always the same. There are certain laws—”

“Oh, bilge!” broke in Betty. “You don’t really believe that. That’s all baloney!”

Appalled, at last he gave it up and silently drove her to her home.

There was nothing left to tell her, nothing to say, because she did not care for any of the standards he set up. She had torn them down with a laugh and flung them to the breeze. She had declared her inalienable right to do as she pleased and flouted the idea that there
was
such a thing as right and wrong.

He groped for the right word and wondered what it had been in his youth that had held him back from many things. Sin—that was it, a sense of sin. Why,
she seemed to have no sense of sin
at all!

He spoke the word as if it were a talisman, a sword that he had mislaid and was glad to find again.

“Betty, it is
sin—”
he said.

She laughed.

“What is
sin?”
she said pertly, imitating his voice as he pronounced the word.

An old answer came from out of his past, learned back in the years of long, dear, drowsy Sabbaths, with a smell of spiced cookies and gingerbread in the air, and his mother’s sweet face as she sat in the rocking chair by her window on the old farm and read her Bible while he learned his catechism:

“Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God,” he said.

Betty stared and laughed again.

“Where did you get that, Chet? Sounds like some highbrow lawyer. Whatever it is, it’s moth eaten. What right would God have to make laws for us? If He put us here on the earth and made us live whether we wanted to or not, it’s up to us to have as good a time as we can, isn’t it? If there
is
a God,” she added mockingly.

He was silent with the shock of it, the humiliation.

He had never taken time to live by them himself, but he had all the doctrines thoroughly defined, laid carefully away in a neat napkin in his mind ready for any time of need. He was an elder in the church! A warm advocate of all things orthodox and biblical! And his child was talking like this! This was rank atheism!

He was silent as he drove up to the door, on his face such a look of haggard despair that Betty turned, in a kind of hard pity, as she got out of the car:

“Listen, Chester,” she said with a bit of fine condescension in her voice. “You needn’t worry about me, really! Dud isn’t as bad as he seems to you, and anyway,
I
know how to take care of myself.
All
girls do nowadays!”

With that she was off into the house, and the door closed lightly behind her.

He sat in the car for a minute more staring at the house, staring through the dark at the door where she had passed, hearing over again the awful things she had said to him—actually
said
to her father!

He moaned and leaned his weary head down against the wheel for a moment. Then laboriously he started his car again and drove slowly into the garage.

His wife was waiting for him when he came in. She had hot coffee and a nice little tray with delicate chicken sandwiches and a cup of custard in a china cup. She had stirred the fire when she heard him come, and his chair was waiting, drawn up before it with the tray on a little table at the side and only a dim shaded light at the far end of the room. She knew how to do all those exquisite little comforting things so perfectly. Just her presence was a rest.

But tonight, he waved her aside. How could he tell her? Betty’s mother, pure as the snow! How could he tell her that Betty’s lovely lips had uttered words of perdition, and that the very breath on which they were brought to his ear was rank with stale tobacco smoke, and a tang of something stronger! Betty’s little rosebud lips! Betty’s baby lips that had been so pure and sweet and wonderful!

He sank into the chair by the fire with a groan and covered his face with his hands. He shook his head when she tried to press the coffee upon him, and groaned again. How could he tell Eleanor? And yet he must. This was something they must bear together, work out together. Could he make Eleanor understand the horror of it all? And if she did understand, would it perhaps
kill
her?

Into the midst of the turmoil of his mind and the distress of his wife, there came the sound of a key turning cautiously in the lock, a key that was unsteadily fitted into place and turned reluctantly. At last the door opened, and Chris lurched into the hall. In his clumsy attempt to be quiet about it he knocked over a vase of flowers that stood on the hall console and then tried to mop it up with his hat, muttering that it was all right. No place for weeds anyway!