Patricia (3 page)

Sometimes she talked them over with her silent father, days when her mother was off playing bridge and her father got home early to read the evening paper. And now and again he would listen and snort when he heard some name of which he did not approve.

“Gwendolyn Champney?” he exclaimed one day, looking up from his paper. “Wherever did you get to know her? She may be all right herself, though I don't see what chance she stands, for her father's a crook and her mother's a fool! It isn't her fault, of course, but I'd just as soon my daughter didn't make a special friend of the daughter of a crook!”

Patricia would listen and study her father thoughtfully and consider her world. She adored her father, and as she grew in wisdom, she began to realize that Daddy's ways and Mother's ways were far apart; for the most part she felt that Daddy's ways were better. But even at that stage of the game she was far too wise to let her mother know how she felt.

Very often on Sunday morning Patricia went with her father to church, to the little old-fashioned plain church where a plain worshipful people gathered. The minister was a young man with a kindly smile and a way of making holy things exceedingly plain and easy to be understood. So Patricia, listening and watching her father from time to time, grew up with a sort of God-consciousness and thought her small thoughts as in the sunlight of His knowledge.

After a time she also became a member of the Sunday school of that same little “behind-the-times” church, and as long as the hour of its meeting remained in the early morning, she enjoyed its privileges, for her mother rose so late that she did not discover how her child was occupying the morning hours. But when some hapless superintendent finally changed the hour to afternoon, the child found it difficult to attend.

Not that she had learned much beyond the emphasis of God-consciousness, for her teachers had not all been either wise or well taught, but it answered very well for a sacred background as she stepped on into her checkered life, with her quiet, reserved father on the one hand and her aggressively worldly mother on the other hand. She often longed for something, but she didn't quite know what it might be.

For the first few years, boys didn't enter into the scheme of things at all for the little girl. They were all “children,” but dancing school and her mother's constant questioning gradually enlightened her.

“And were the boys nice to you, darling?” her mother would question her when she came home from dancing school. “Did the really nicest ones ask you to dance with them?”

“Who are the nicest ones, Mother?” Patricia would ask solemnly.

“Oh, you dear little silly!” her mother would say. “Surely you know who are the nicest ones. Little gentlemen. Like Thorny Bellingham. He is one of the very nicest, you know. His mother is my very best friend, and they live in the nicest house in town.”

“I don't think he is nice at all!” Patricia remarked thoughtfully. “He pinches the girls when the teacher isn't looking, and he trips all the girls that dance with him. I'm sure I hope he doesn't ask me. I don't like him. He makes ugly faces at Mary Todd, and I saw him bite her finger one day. He just set his teeth down hard on it and made the blood come, and Mary cried!”

“Who is Mary Todd?” said Patricia's mother. “Isn't she quite a common child? I think her mother is a professional dancer or something. I don't see why they allow her in the class at all. I shall have to speak to Madame about it.”

“Well, I don't like Thorny, anyway!” said Patricia firmly.

“Oh, but my dear, you mustn't say that. His mother is your mother's best friend, and he's only a child, you know.”

“Well, I'm only a child, too, but I don't go around biting people,” she said. “I don't think he is nice at all! I won't dance with him, either.”

“Oh, my dear! That's what comes of your going to that common public school!” bemoaned the mother. “It's just what I thought would happen! I really shall have to speak to your father about it. He must be brought to see his duty and send you to a proper school.”

With a gasp of alarm, Patricia shut her lips and resolved in her child-heart never to say anything more against Thorny Bellingham, and the days went on with Patricia still in the public school.

Patricia had seen John Worth for the first time when she was just a little girl in the third grade at school.

He had been a tall, slim boy, taller than any of the boys in her grade. He came into the schoolroom and was given a temporary seat just across the aisle and one row ahead of her own. There was a window opposite his seat and his clear profile was sharp against the morning light. She could not help but notice his expression. He had a nice dependable face, for just a boy, with well-cut features and strong, firm lips. He seemed different from the other boys in the room, perhaps a year older and somehow very true and straightforward. Perhaps that was what made his eyes seem to have pleasant lights behind them like the glow of lamps. Once he turned his gaze in her direction and she caught a friendly look on his face, and the lamps seemed to blaze out with quick radiance. There was cheerful interest in his glance.

He was only there about two hours, writing, taking an examination. Then the teacher called his name. He was sent for from the principal's office. Patricia watched him as he walked across the room to the door. He walked with a quick, firm tread. He was wearing brown corduroys and a flannel shirt. He had dark brown hair, well cut and a little curly. Patricia knew as she looked at him that he wasn't a boy to be afraid of. He wouldn't play tricks on you, nor try to trip you. Not with those lamps behind his eyes.

He didn't come back again after he went to the principal's office. Days afterward she heard someone say he was in the fourth grade, and that was upstairs. She scarcely ever saw him.

But she did not forget his face. The other boys she knew were just boys in her mind, careless, thoughtless, childish boys. But this boy had looked as if he had a spirit behind his face, a spirit that thought and weighed things like a man, only he didn't seem old, nor what they called sissified. He had a merry twinkle in his eyes, and though there was a gentleness about him, she had once seen him in the schoolyard thrashing a big bully who had been tormenting a smaller, younger boy.

The next year she was upstairs herself. Not in his classes, of course, for he was a year ahead of her. But sometimes during study period they sat in the same room, separated by the length of the room. Whenever she happened to notice him, he was hard at work studying, not just sitting there gazing around him and fooling the way so many of the boys did. It made her want to study harder herself to see how hard he was working.

Sometimes John Worth's class would recite while Patricia's class was sitting in the back of the room studying, for the school was crowded that year, waiting for the new building that was being constructed.

Patricia would always raise her eyes from her book whenever he recited. She liked his clear accent, the touch of Scottish on his tongue that always claimed attention at once. He had what the little girl afterward learned to call a “scholarly” tone. And he made what he said interesting no matter what the subject. He defined his words and gave his answers in such simple terms that it was clear to them all, even though the study was one that they had not as yet taken up. So Patricia made a point of listening to every word John Worth said, and once after she had been watching him so, he gave a quick puzzled look toward her as he sat down, as if, like words that had been spoken, he had felt her gaze upon him.

It was only the minutest instant that their eyes met, and no one else noticed. But she suddenly saw those lamps that were behind John Worth's eyes light up, bringing that illumination to his face. Briefly, his lips trembled into a fleeting smile, and her own lips smiled shyly in acknowledgment. Then the boy bent to pick up a paper that had fallen to the floor, and instantly he was back in regular form, his gaze turned toward the teacher. But somehow Patricia felt that she knew John Worth a little from that time, although he had never spoken to her, nor she to him, and he did not look at her again. They were just children.

One morning in the springtime Patricia came into the kitchen in search of her mother, whose voice she could hear. She wanted to ask something about an errand her mother wanted done. But Mrs. Prentiss was quite occupied talking to a boy with a basket of beautiful wild strawberries on his arm. She was picking over the top berries and inspecting them.

“They're not very large,” she said in a cold, critical voice. The little girl hated to have her mother talk in that standoffish way to people she considered her inferiors. Patricia gave a quick glance toward the boy just as he lifted his gaze to his customer's face.

“Wild strawberries are not usually very large,” he said earnestly, “but they make up in flavor what they lack in size.” He said it quietly, quite respectfully. And Patricia recognized him at once. It was John Worth! And with quick sympathy and a desire to cover her mother's coldness, she hurried forward, looking at the boy with a shy smile.

“Oh, hello!” she said in a friendly tone.

Mrs. Prentiss looked up in astonishment.

“Patricia, what are you doing here?” she said severely. “I thought I sent you on an errand.”

The little girl looked up with quick apprehension, scenting the disapproval in her mother's voice.

“Yes, but I wanted to ask you about it,” she answered quickly. “Oh, Mother, aren't those perfectly lovely strawberries!” And her beautiful eyes and smiling face turned toward the boy and his basket again.

“Taste them,” offered John Worth, holding out his basket pleasantly.

Eagerly Patricia reached and took a beautiful berry from the top of the heap.

“No!” screamed her mother. “Don't taste those berries, Patricia! They haven't been washed yet!”

But the berry was already inside the little girl's mouth and her pretty red lips had closed over the sweet morsel.

“Patricia! You are a naughty girl!” stormed her mother angrily. “Didn't you hear me tell you not to taste them? You can't tell who picked them, and they say pickers always have horribly dirty hands. Now perhaps you've caught some terribly lowdown disease! Go to the door and spit that berry out, quick!”

The little girl, with a grieved look toward her mother, went over toward the door, her heart filled with shame. But the boy spoke quietly, almost as if he were an older person.

“They are quite clean,” he said. “I picked them myself this morning, and I washed my hands very carefully before I went out.” There was a sound of protection for her in the boy's voice, and Patricia swallowed the berry instead of spitting it out, though her mother was too annoyed to notice that.

“Be still!” she said to the young huckster. “It is not your place to answer back! Patricia, go up to your room and stay there till I come!” And then to the boy again: “I don't think I care for any berries this morning. I prefer to do my buying from hucksters who are not impertinent.”

The boy's face flushed, and the lamps in his eyes winked, almost went out, and then blazed up again. The boy straightened up to his full height and lifted his head with dignity, young though he was.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I did not mean to be impertinent. I wanted you to know that the berries were all right, but I will not trouble you by coming again.”

“Wait!” said Mrs. Prentiss sharply. “I didn't say you were not to come again. On the contrary, I think I would like some of those berries every day while they last. I remember that they make unusually fine jam, wild strawberries. Perhaps you may leave those today, too. I think I could use them after all. But remember, I won't stand for any answering back!”

Patricia, going slowly up the stairs with tears running down her cheeks, heard it all, for the kitchen door was not closed tightly. It made her feel ashamed. She wanted to rush back and tell her mother that she was talking to one of the finest boys in the public school, but she knew that would only add fuel to the flame of anger already started, so she went sadly up to her room.

A few minutes later her mother came, having delayed to discuss honey, when he could bring it, and the possibility of getting fresh peas and Seckel pears in their season. Though if she had noticed the set of the boy's shoulders as he left the kitchen door, she might have had her doubts as to whether he would ever return again.

“Well,” she said as she breezed into her little daughter's room, “you certainly are doing credit to your public school training! Coming out into the kitchen and addressing a little hoodlum from the back country with that elegant expression ‘Hello!' I certainly am ashamed of you, and I shall have to speak to your father about this. Haven't you learned yet that you mustn't speak to strange boys? Had you ever seen him before that you dared to address him so informally right before your mother? A young scapegrace with bare feet? I ask you, had you ever seen him before?”

“Oh yes,” said Patricia. “I see him in school, though he's not in my grade. I only see him once in a great while. But he's not from the back country, Mother; he's considered one of the best scholars in his grade.”

“Well, I'm sorry for his grade, then. That speaks well for your school that they allow a barefoot boy to come to school!”

“Oh, he is not barefoot when he comes to school,” protested the child. “He wears nice shoes like any of the boys.”

“And so that's a specimen of the public school children, is it!” went on Mrs. Prentiss, ignoring her daughter's explanation. “Well, I certainly shall make your father understand how you are mixing with common people and saying ‘Hello' to them as if you were a child of the street.”

Patricia's lip trembled.

“But Mother, Gloria says ‘Hello' all the time. All the girls do. Even the girls in dancing school, I mean. It's what they say now. It's considered what they call smart and up-to-date!”

“Be still, Patricia! Don't you take to answering back. I suppose you learned that in your precious school, too, where your huckster-playmate learned it. Upon my word, we are coming to a pretty pass, hobnobbing with farm children!”

“Well, but I don't!” said Patricia earnestly. “I never spoke a word to him before. I just see him in study hour, across the room, and of course he's seen me and heard my name when I was reciting. I thought it wouldn't be polite not to speak to him in my own house.”

“Polite!” sniffed the lady furiously. “As if you had to be polite to a little hoodlum like that. Now, Patricia, I want it thoroughly understood that you are not to do that again. If he comes here with honey or fruit, just understand he is a laborer like any of the delivery people from the stores and you have nothing whatever to do with him. If I find you in conversation with him again, I shall have to refuse to buy from him anymore. Do you understand?”

Patricia's head drooped.

“Yes, Mother,” she said meekly, but she stood for a long moment looking out the window thinking, realizing that this was something she could not understand. She shrank from appearing unfriendly if she should happen to meet John Worth around the house unexpectedly. But she mustn't ever be around when he was there or she would lose him a chance to sell his wares, and she realized that it was probably important to him to sell them, or he would not be going around trying to dispose of them. How complicated life was growing. So many things she must not do that she couldn't understand, because they seemed to her things that were really right to do. And they all seemed to center around her darling school and the dear little church where she and her father liked to go. Why was it so? Why couldn't Mother and Father be alike in their ways of thinking? She sighed deeply, and her mother, passing her door again, heard and looked toward her, annoyed.

“For pity's sake, don't stand there mooning about nothing! Get your hat and go on that errand at once! It's almost an hour since I told you about it. And wash your face! You've got tear stains all around your eyes. So ridiculous, weeping because I refused to let you become friendly with a child who is far beneath you. I'm afraid you have low tastes. That's what it does to be continually in the company of common people! I declare you get more and more difficult! If this keeps on, we may have to move to another suburb. Perhaps then we could select a suitable school and there would be some hope of you growing up with a few decent manners.”

Patricia caught her breath and went swiftly to her wardrobe to get her hat and then depart on the errand. But her heart was sore as she walked along the street, with the sunlight flecking through the young maple leaves from the arching trees above. She felt somehow as if she had been the cause of bringing unpleasantness to the nicest boy in school, and it made her very unhappy. The worst of it was that she couldn't in any way make up for it. There wasn't a way of explaining it or apologizing to John Worth without being disloyal to her mother. And Patricia had a very strong feeling of loyalty to her family.

The next winter Patricia was ten. One day when the creek was frozen and the skating wonderful, Patricia had permission to go skating with a group of girls who went to the same dancing school. She was never allowed to go to the creek with her own schoolmates. There had been a grand battle before she even learned to skate, until her father took matters in hand and taught her himself. Then grudgingly the mother consented, provided the companions might be of her choosing.

That day they had gone down to the creek together—Gloria Van Emmons, Katherine MacShane, Sylvia Vane, and Martella Rankin.