THE HONOR GIRL (15 page)

At a quarter of eleven they issued forth from the house, father, daughter, and two sons, walking proudly together. The boys walked behind, with many admiring glances at the slender girl in her pretty suit and hat. If they
had
to go to church, at least no one else had a better-looking sister than they had. They made a show of picking a thread from her shoulder and jumping to pick up her handkerchief when she dropped it, and anyone could see they were almost ready to burst with pride over her looks.

The minister noticed the newcomers, and came down after the service to speak to them. It had perhaps never occurred to him before to go in search of this hopeless-looking man and his wild sons. They seemed far more impossible to win than the heathen on some distant shore. But now that they had come of their own accord he was glad to see them, and made them feel it. The father accepted his hearty handshake with a dumb wonder, and said little. This coming back into a world which had known him and his wife long years ago was a terribly shaking experience. He could think of little to say. He stood back, respectfully quiet, while Elsie said pleasant things to the minister, and told him where she had been attending church and that she had come now to live in her father’s house. Somehow it gave him a great sense of comfort to hear her make that statement in the presence of others. Before it had seemed like a wonderful dream that might slip away at any time and leave the blank, dull loneliness again.

The brothers looked like wild things at bay when the minister came down the aisle toward them, and Jack would have bolted then and there if it hadn’t been too late.

They shook hands a trifle stiffly, as if they were not sure of the minister, whether he were enemy or friend. They stood with alert, glittering gaze fixed steadily on him to see whether he gave Elsie the deference due her, or whether he let the fact that she belonged to them affect in the slightest his treatment of her. They had the attitude of being there to protect her and of barely tolerating his presence. Elsie, glancing at them lovingly, was proud of their gentlemanly bearing. She wondered whether the minister’s genial smile would not win them. She liked him at once herself.

She did not say much about the church service on the way home. She had the feeling that she must go slowly with regard to church, and let them praise it if they would. And presently she was rewarded. Jack, walking behind with his brother, remarked: “He seems to be a pretty good sort of guy,” referring to the minister; and the father assented with unusual interest: “Yes, that was a good sermon he gave us. It was all true what he said, too. Seemed as if he was preaching right to me.”

“I guess he’s a pretty good sort,” added Gene. “I hear folks around town talk that way. You know he hasn’t been here but a couple of months or so.”

On the whole, Elsie was well satisfied with her morning’s experiment, and sat down to dinner feeling that matters were doing well.

I wonder, is it true that whenever we congratulate ourselves that things are moving well there always comes along something to upset and spoil them? Is it a part of the work of the devil to watch for our complacency, and bring us face to face with something unpleasant right then and there?

However that may be, the thought had hardly escaped Elsie’s consciousness before there came a sound of footsteps at the front door, and there was a loud call for Jack as of one accustomed to such unceremonious entrances.

Jack leaped as if he had some kind of an electrical contrivance attached to him. The conversation seemed suspended in mid-air while he went to the door. There was a moment’s low growl outside the foyer, and then Jack returned, flinging down his napkin and snatching up his cap from the hall table with one and the same movement. “I gotta beat it. So-long.”

“O Jack!” came from Elsie with a wail of apprehension. “You haven’t finished your dinner, and there’s an awfully nice dessert, a new one.”

“Can’t help it,” said Jack with a half-wistful look back at his plate, which was only half cleared. “I gotta go. The fellas were here twice for me this morning. I forgot all about it. Had this date for two weeks. Awful sorry, Elsie. You save me some, won’t you?”

“But Jack!” said Elsie, her eyes suddenly filling with disappointed tears that she hadn’t in the least summoned. “This is my first Sunday, and I thought we’d have such a nice time together.”

“Gee! Elsie, I didn’t plan to do it. I tell you I had this date for two weeks back, and I
gotta go
. I’ll get back as quick as I can.”

“Will you be back by four o’clock? I wanted you and Gene to take me for a walk.”

“I’ll try,” said Jack weakly, slamming the door hard to keep out the sound of Elsie’s disappointed protest. He knew he couldn’t get back. He was going on a thirty-mile jaunt in an automobile with some girls and fellows, and he knew it would be late before he could possibly return. He sneaked out the door and sprang into the car in three strides, his conscience and his stomach both protesting; yet he felt bound to go. He didn’t have the nerve to back out. He knew perfectly well there were other fellows Bob Lowe could have asked to go with him. He didn’t particularly want to go, hadn’t wanted too much when he made the engagement, except for the ride, and to “pass the time away.” But it was the way of the fellows, and he couldn’t get out of it. They would “kid the life out of him” if he stayed home because his sister had come.

The little broken group at the table ate their dinner gloomily after his departure.

“He’d no business going!” declared Gene. “It’s that Bob Lowe. He’s always carting Jack off somewhere. He’s a lazy good-for-nothing himself, and he’s always getting Jack into every fool scheme he can.”

“Where do they go? What kind of a fellow is he?” Elsie was trying to conceal her disappointment and not spoil the day for the others.

“Oh, I don’t know. They go off to see some girls or visit some fellows in the city. I never knew Bob to have anything worthwhile in view. He just fools. He doesn’t even work. His father lets him do just as he pleases, lets him drive the car whenever he likes, and doesn’t make him go to work. He’s got some money, and Bob is going to spend it.”

“Does he drink?”

Elsie asked the question in a low tone, a desperate fear pulling at her heart. What if Jack were in that danger?

“I don’t know, I suppose so,” answered Gene crossly. Something in his expression made his sister think he did know, only he didn’t want to say.

She took a long breath, and tried to dismiss the subject and smile; but the father sat, thoughtfully looking out of the window and sighing now and then, with the regret of one who sees it is too late to undo the past. After dinner he went and sat in the big chair by himself with a newspaper spread before him, but he did not read. He was looking into the past and seeing where he might have led his sons by a different road.

Elsie wandered to the piano, and Gene sat nearby, watching and listening. At first they tried to sing; but they missed Jack’s voice, and somehow the fervor died out of the singing. Then Elsie began to play hymns and bits of variations, then a snatch of a Chopin nocturne, a strain of Handel’s “Largo,” a touch of Grieg’s “Morning,” anything that came into her troubled mind, while she watched and waited for the brother who, she instinctively knew, was not coming for a long time.

It became four o’clock, and half past; and then Eugene suggested that they take a walk. He said Jack would not be home till late that night; he never was back early when he went with Bob Lowe.

Elsie sighed, cast a troubled glance at her father, who was asleep in his chair, and finally yielded.

They walked out a long, quiet street that led to the cemetery. Perhaps neither of them realized where they were going until they came to it; and then Elsie, looking up with quick understanding of her surroundings, thought it was long since she had been there, said impulsively: “Let us go in, Gene. Can you find Mother’s grave?”

Standing on the bare brown hillside beside the grave, looking down to the little brook that rippled below in the late-afternoon sunshine, looking up through the bare branches overhead to the autumn sky, a strange silence came over them. It seemed as if the two so long separated had all at once come close to the mother who was gone, and understood her cares and wishes.

“It seems to me I can remember that she worried about you a great deal, Gene. She was so anxious for you to grow up a good man and strong, she used to say.” Elsie broke the silence without realizing what she was going to do.

“I know,” said the brother, looking off quickly to the west where heavy purple clouds raggedly bound with gold gave hint of the coming sunset. Then hoarsely, reluctantly, after a minute, “She would be worried about Jack now, I suppose.”

Elsie had no words to answer at once, but she laid her hand on her brother’s arm.

“Couldn’t we help—couldn’t we try to do for him—what she would have done if she had lived?” she asked at length.

“Perhaps,” said the boy, strangely moved. “He ought to get away from the factories!” he said fiercely after a minute. “It’s no place for him. He’s too young. You don’t know what it’s like over there.”

Elsie was still for some minutes. When she spoke again, her voice was stronger, as if she had come to some decision.

“He ought to go back to school, Gene. He
must
go to college!”

“He’ll never do it.” The brother shook his head sadly.

“He would if
you
did.”

They had turned and were walking back to the street now, and the golden light of the setting sun was streaming forth from between two purply-black ragged clouds, and lit the girl’s face. Her eyes were stern with a holy determination, and her lips were set. Her brother saw there was real purpose in her words and she meant to fight every inch of the way. He looked at her, and conviction stole into his heart. Yes, Jack would probably go to college if he went, and would never go unless he did. Yet it seemed just as impossible to him as ever that he at the age of twenty-three should presume to think of going to college; but still there was at least this one good reason for it, that if he went his brother might also be induced to go.

Elsie talked about it all the way back, but her brother said very little beyond shaking his head once or twice and telling her it was impossible. Nevertheless, she went on talking, and declared she meant to find out about classes and entrance examinations the very next day. Her brother only laughed, and told her she had the perseverance of the saints, and didn’t she know he couldn’t possibly go to college?

Then they went in, and Elsie with her brother’s help made delicate little sandwiches and cocoa, and got out an apple pie and some chocolate cake and peaches. All the time they were eating she kept listening and watching for Jack, her heart jumping at every noise.

And all at once he came, sullenly, noisily, wearily, she thought, slamming the door and flinging down his hat and coat. He was cold and cross and hungry, and “sore as the deuce,” as he expressed it. Bob Lowe had kidded him all the way over about going to church; and, when they reached their destination, the girls had gone off with another fellow, naturally, as he had not arrived when he said he would; and Bob Lowe was very sore indeed, and laid the blame wholly on Jack. Things grew so uncomfortable on the way back that Jack had parted from Bob as soon as they came near the city lines, and had come home on the trolley; and the whole affair had not improved Jack’s temper. Moreover, Jack knew that he had been rude and impolite to his sister, and he was consequently more rude and impolite to make up for it. On the whole, Elsie judged it unwise to suggest going to church again that night, and instead covered Jack up on the couch, and sang and read to the three for an hour.

She was very weary and sick at heart when she went up to her room that night, also worried about Jack. Half impatiently she told herself as she lay down that, if the boys were going to get tired of staying at home with her, it would be useless for her to remain here. And then immediately came the thought that it was just because of the need for someone to lure them to stay home that she had come, and she must not mind a few discouragements.

I
t was not easy to arise a whole hour earlier in the morning than she was accustomed to do, and, when Elsie looked out of her window on a gray day with sullen clouds in the background, she sighed and wondered whether after all she had not made a terrible mistake. Somehow in the gray of the cold early morning the little rose room in its daintiness did not make is appeal as it did in the brightness of the day or of electric light.

Nevertheless, she managed to keep her face cheerful and make the breakfast a pleasant time to remember as each went his way for the day; and when she had finally seated herself in the trolley, she was able to smile clear down into her heart and look at things bravely. She was going to town to get some circulars and a catalogue of the university today. She was going to call up the dean and ask a lot of questions. She had written them all down on a card so she would forget nothing. If it were a possible thing, she meant to get Eugene to start in at the university. There was no reason at all why he shouldn’t. It might be a fight to get him to go, but Elsie felt the joy of the battle, and the day began to look good to her. By the time she arrived at her friend’s home she was in excellent spirits. A few questions to the friend made her feel still more helpful, and her talk with the dean of the university sent her spirits soaring hopefully. The thing she proposed for her brother was not nearly so impossible a matter as she had feared. When she went back to Morningside she was fortified with much information; and she could hardly wait until supper was over before she began at her brother.

But Eugene had been through a long day of thinking. In imagination he had faced all sorts of possible situations in an unknown university, and he had firmly fixed his stakes that he would never, never go. Elsie found she had to do her work all over again. Once she was almost in despair and came near breaking down. She had so hoped to get him to go down and see the dean at once, but she saw now it would be impossible. However, he was deeply moved, and finally promised her he would think about it again.