Patricia (22 page)

Oh, of course Dad would help her to get away from it all somehow if she made him understand what terrible pressure she was under, but that would be misery for Dad. She couldn't do that! Oh, how silly it all was anyway. Why did she have to be married if she wasn't ready?

But yet, suppose this was God's plan for her life and she was trying to frustrate it? And suppose that by and by after it was too late to right things she would sometime understand that and have to suffer all the rest of her life for what she had passed by in her vague uncertainty? Would God let her do a thing like that?
Oh, God, I'm Yours. Won't You please hurry and help me to know what to do. Make me certain! Don't let me go frightened into this!
That was what her heart was crying out as she turned away from the telephone.

It was just then that the servant approached with John Worth's card, and as she saw it her hope of a few moments' reprieve sprang up again in spite of her.

And then, when she had read that card, suddenly the thought of John Worth seemed wonderfully steadying. A little talk with John, even if it were only for a few breathless moments, would be like a breath from a fresh mountain breeze to her fainting soul!

So, her face clearing, her eyes bright with sudden hope, she gave the orders to the servant and turned swiftly to go to John. He had promised to come, and now he was here! What would he be like after all these years?

She went through the library door to the porch and made her way by an outside entrance to the room where he was waiting. As she went, memories flocked around her, memories of things of the past that she thought had long been put aside. They came like dear old friends as if to rescue her from her trouble of the past few weeks. Silly, when of course they could not help her now, and she was only making more trouble for herself with this delay. But she had to see John!

Memories! Ah! A pleasant schoolroom and a lad with lights in his eyes! A voice that made her listen even when he was just reciting commonplaces! A rainbow and the breath of flowers, the smell of newly washed earth, and a walk in the twilight! A sweet dead face with lilies around it, her lips softly touching his brow!

She passed her hand over her eyes and drew a deep breath of mingled pain and exultation. He had come! Would he be the same?

She paused an instant with her hand on the latch before she opened the little door beside the chimney in the small reception room. “Oh, God,” she breathed, “help me!” Perhaps this had come to show her that it had all been a dream that meant nothing. Perhaps it had been this dream that had stayed in her mind and hindered her from accepting other things that might have been satisfying if her heart had not set up an ideal that perhaps was not as fine as she had thought. But no, that could not be! What crazy thoughts she was thinking! She must be coming down with something and was even now beginning to be a little delirious! How silly! She must get control of herself.

Then girding up her heart, she opened the door and went in. As she entered she thought she caught the fragrance of valley-lilies on the air, and she wondered. Was it just her imagination?

John Worth had been waiting there what seemed to him an age before he heard her footsteps coming along the tiles of the sun porch. Was she coming, or had she sent someone to say she could not see him?

He could not help but hear what was going on on the other side of that velvet curtain beside him, the throng in the other room clamoring away, and his heart had been going down, down, into a deep despair. This was not his world. Why had he come here? Why had he presumed to think he could ever fit into an atmosphere where this girl belonged, or that she would care to fit into his?

But oh, she didn't seem, in his memory of her, to belong here. She had always seemed to be of finer clay than any of those who were shouting their bright nothings back and forth to one another.

Every moment others were arriving and swelling the gathering into a noisy clamor. What a fool he had been to come in when he found there were guests! But perhaps it was just as well that he should have come here to see for himself, for there would have been no other way to get that vision of her out of his heart. He wasn't sure even that was going to do it. She had seemed such a true, such a wonderful girl, even when she was only a child.

But now surely his eyes were open wide! Would it not be better for him to slip away before she came and end this business, now while it was possible? Or must he stay and make some excuse? Say he had just dropped in to visit, and as she had guests he would go with just a greeting, and perhaps come again sometime?

No, it would be better just to silently disappear before the whole gang discovered him. That is, if there was a way to get out. He felt guilty of great folly.

He studied the door beside the fireplace. Did that open to a coat closet, or the sun porch? If so, could he get out the porch door before anyone discovered him?

“Where's Pat?” cried Thorny raucously just outside the curtain. “I say, Barker, get me another cocktail, can't you? That was only a sample.”

He rose impatient to be gone, and just then the door into the sun porch opened.

She dawned upon him at that instant and held him breathless. She was all in silver, slim dress and shoes and her dark hair was wrapped around her small head. He thought he had never seen anything so lovely.

“John!” she said softly, out of the shadows that were beginning to grope the corners of the room. “John!”

She came toward him shyly, all her worldly manner dropping from her like a cloak she had cast aside, and she stood shyly before him as if they had been again on the hillside together.

“Patricia!” He took both her hands in his and spoke her name reverently.

“Another cocktail, Barker, don't you hear?” shouted Thorny just outside the curtain.

John Worth quivered at the sound as if his palace of dreams were shivering at atoms around him.

“John, you have come just in time for my dinner!” said Patricia, rousing to the present with a new lilt in her voice. “Come, I
need
you! Someone has failed at the last minute, and to think it should have been
you
that came to fill the place! Come, we are just about to sit down. Your place is beside me. We can talk at the table.” Her voice was happy and her lips were smiling, but her words were like a cold draught from another world. He drew back.

“No, Patricia, I would not think of intruding. I will only keep you from your guests a moment. I've come a long way to tell you something—”

“Won't it keep till tonight after they have gone—? Or after dinner, perhaps, in the garden? You won't mind staying a little late—?”

“My train leaves at midnight.”

“Well, then you will tell me at the table—”

John Worth took one step toward her and caught her hands gently but firmly in both his own.

“Listen!” he said, and there was something arresting in his voice that made her pause and look into his eyes. “It won't take long to tell. It is just this. I've loved you all these years, and I've always meant to come back someday and tell you as soon as I was in a position to honorably do so. At last I have reached that place, but I am afraid I am too late. I've been called to take a position of great honor over in Europe and I sail tomorrow at noon. I must leave here at midnight to catch my ship. I'd have given you more time and myself a bigger chance if I had known sooner, but I came the first minute I got the word. This is all horribly abrupt I know, but when I found you had guests I could not bring myself to go away without at least telling you. There! I've been fool enough to lay bare my heart before you! Now, do you see why I cannot come out to dinner with you?”

Patricia, after just an instant's pause, lifting her eyes filled with a lovely light, said, “No, I don't, John. Please come out. I really mustn't keep my guests waiting any longer.”

He gave her a puzzled look, wondering, his heart sinking.

“Do you want me under those conditions?” he asked, searchingly.

“I do.” Patricia's voice sounded almost as if she were responding to a question in a ceremony, so solemnly she said it.

John stood hesitating, studying her. What did she mean? Was this just her way of sweetly putting him off?

Outside the curtain Thorny's voice rose clamorously.

“Where's Pat? Where has she gone?” he babbled, his hand pulling back the velvet curtain as he peered into the room where the two stood.

“Here I am,” said Pat in a steady voice, stepping out from the folds of the curtain, one hand lifted to push it back. Then turning her glance back to John Worth she said with a smile, “Come, John!” and slipped her other hand through his arm.

So they appeared suddenly in the doorway.

“See!” she called in a clear voice, her eyes starry. “I've a surprise for you all. A surprise guest. Thorny, you remember John Worth?”

Afterward she was glad she had not even remembered to notice whether John Worth wore evening clothes or not. He
did
. She noted with satisfaction later that his attire was faultless and that he wore his garments quite as if he were accustomed to such apparel. Indeed, as she caught a better glimpse of him in the lit room she thrilled to the face that he was even distinguished looking.

There was a moment's tense silence after Patricia's announcement. The guests were thinking back, trying to identify the newcomer.

There was utter astonishment, amid a dead silence, as if a bell had sounded, calling them all to attention. There seemed something almost electric in the air.

Perhaps the eyes of all would not have been quite so bewildered if it had not been for that whispered hint of a surprise in store. They looked and were puzzled.

There was nothing wrong with the distinguished man standing beside Patricia, watching them with grave, aloof eyes. Nothing wrong at all. He was even most interesting. But somehow he did not fit into the picture. He was not of their world. Was it that he was of a world
above
theirs? Why was his presence somehow like a dash of cold water when one wanted wine?

“Who is he?” whispered the coral one of the jade.

“Oh, some grind she's picked up somewhere. Someone who has done something intellectual I'll bet! Pat gets those complexes at times. I've often wondered if it isn't just to get in the limelight some more. But what a bore tonight when we're all set for something else. And what will Thorny say? Look at his face. Now he'll get into one of his tantrums and drink a lot. I don't see why he cares. There are plenty of girls just as good-looking as Pat, and just as rich!”

For Thorny had come about-face with battle in his eyes.

“Worth?” he said. “John Worth? Why—ah—yes, seems to me I do remember him. You worked at Miller's farm, didn't you? Looked after the cows or something, didn't you, and barged into high school between times when you got done being nursemaid to the cows?”

There was a sneer on Thorny's handsome lips and scorn in his angry eyes.

Everybody stared, but John Worth only grinned pleasantly, until Bramwell Brown called out:

“Yes, but remember the time John Worth rescued you and me from Miller's old blind bull in the pasture!”

Then the whole fickle company burst into wild mirth. The laugh was on Thorny now.

Then Patricia was aware of her mother suspiciously watching the stranger from the length of the room. She had just entered and perhaps had not heard Thorny's hateful fling, but there was iciness in her glance and haughtiness in her bearing. When Patricia introduced him she said coldly, “Oh, you are the pilot Patricia told us about, aren't you?” and looked him over, a puzzled sharpness in her glance as if something about him perplexed her. Or was she just appraising him to see how much of a hindrance he might prove to her plans for her only child? “Did you fly down here?”

“Yes,” said John Worth easily, “I flew down, but I'm not the pilot. He couldn't make it, and I came in his place.”

“Oh!” said Patricia's mother and then gave him another piercing glance. This was someone altogether new, was it? Well, Patricia certainly was a difficult girl, and it would be a real relief when she was safely married to Thorny.

But Patricia's father came to the front just then, stepping up with the first gleam of interest in his eye since he had come into the room.

“Why, it's John Worth, isn't it? I'm glad to see you again. Where have you been keeping yourself all these years? I haven't seen you since you disappeared into thin air just as I had my eye on you for a job in my office as soon as you got through high school. I couldn't get trace of you.”

George Prentiss's voice was big and hearty and boomed into the noisy clamor of the merry company. His wife turned astonished eyes at him and then quickly searched the face of the young man. Who was he? Had she seen him before? And was George in on this? Were he and Patricia trying to put something over on her, now at this last minute, when everything had been going so nicely?

The other guests seemed to sense something significant in the atmosphere, for they suddenly ceased talking and turned to look at John Worth, hushing their voices just in time to hear what he was answering to his host's question.

“Oh, I was away at college, you know, then Tech two years, and after that I taught in Tech until I took my present position. I thank you for thinking of me.”

There was a quiet self-possession about the young man that prolonged the silence, as they studied him and tried to classify him. And in that instant of silence the servant approached and announced dinner.

Patricia swept a quick glance over the guests and took command.

“Thorny, you're to take Mother out, you know,” she said in a clear voice, smiling over her shoulder at the scowling Thorny.

Thorny was standing just behind her, obviously expecting to take her into dinner.

“Where the devil did you raise him, Pat?” he growled under his breath, nodding contemptuously toward John Worth. “For Pete's sake, get him out of here quick or there'll be a murder. I always hated that guy. You didn't
invite
him, did you? He certainly had his nerve to dare to come here—!”

“Come, John,” she said in a clear voice, slipping her hand within his arm. “You're to take me out.”

The coral one was at John's right as they sat down and engaged his attention for the first few minutes, despite his best efforts to withdraw. She was burning with curiosity, but John Worth knew how to answer questions without giving out much information, and at last she turned from him in despair.

“Now,” said Patricia, turning to John when they were well started on the first course. “What time did you say you have to leave?”

“One minute after midnight.”

“And it is half past eight now,” said Patricia briskly, lifting her eyes to the ancestral clock across the room. “We haven't much time, have we, John?”

She spoke in a low conversational tone as if she might be talking about the weather or old school days.

“It doesn't look as though we were going to have any,” gloomed John sadly. “What time do you hope that this jamboree will break up, if any?”

Her face sparkled into smiles, but she gave undivided attention to the soup course that had just been brought.

“No, it doesn't,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “But we can get quite a little across. Tell me—all about it—please.”

She might have been making any commonplace remark, and his manner was equally as cool as he said, “You have some white flowers down by the hedge.”

She flashed him a look of deep comprehension.

“Oh, had you noticed them?”

“They called me in. In fact, I might not have had the courage if they had not been there.”

“They are my favorite flowers.” Again her voice and manner were most casual. “In fact, I believe I prefer them to any others.”

“Tell me about them, please.”

John Worth's manner was perfect, as if he were quite accustomed to dining out.