The Prodigal Girl (3 page)

The ghost stepped nearer and gripped him by the throat. He must drive this awful thing away. He must get to the dining room quickly! Perhaps he was going to be sick! He must swallow a cup of coffee. That would make it all right, of course. There was nothing in all this. Of course there was nothing at all—nothing at all!

Seated at the table, he passed his hand over his eyes and looked about on them all, trying to focus his eyes on Betty’s petulant face. It was plain that Betty was displeased with him. Yet somehow her face did not look quite so disturbing here as it had under the weird light of the hall chandelier. It was better blended, less suggestive of paint and powder. Of course he was quite accustomed to the ever-present powder puff that all girls nowadays played with in public, but it had never entered his head that his daughter wore anything like what people called “makeup.” That was low and common to his thinking, and quite unflattering for a girl of respectable family.

Chris broke in upon his thoughts with a sudden request for money.

The father tried to summon a natural voice:

“Why, Chris, you had your usual allowance, and it is only ten days into the month. What do you want of more money?” he asked, feeling that his voice sounded very far away and not at all decided. His mind really was on Betty.

But Chris seemed almost to resent his query:

“Well, I
want
it!” he said crisply, as if his father had no right to ask the question.

“What’s the matter with your allowance? You’ll have to give an explanation. What have you done with it?”

“He–he–he’s lost it playin’ pool!” chimed in Johnny joyously with a grin of triumph toward his older brother.

“Shut up! You infant! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” said Chris angrily.

“I do so! I was lookin’ in Shark’s window with Bill Lafferty when you lost. I heard Skinny Rector tell you he’s goin’ ta tell our dad if you didn’t pay up tanight!”

Chris shoved his chair back noisily.

“Aw, baloney! Dad if you’re gonta listen to an infant, I’m done!
Keep
yer money. There’s plenty of places I can get money if you won’t give me what I want! Other boys don’t get this kinda treatment in their homes—want ta know every nosey little thing, and listen to an infant!”

He complained all the way through the hall in a loud voice, and the front door slammed on his final word.

The family sat in a perturbed silence for an instant till the mother broke it in a worried voice that had a hidden sob in its texture.

“He hasn’t eaten a mouthful, Chester.”

“Well, what can you expect?” reproached Betty. “You can’t treat a young man as if he were a three-year-old. If Chester wants Chrissie to stay at home, he’ll have to shell out a little more liberally from now on. Chrissie’s almost grown up and isn’t allowed anything compared to other boys. Why, we’re the only two in our set that haven’t got cars to come to school with, and I think it’s scabby! I’m getting ashamed to go out of the house.”

“That’ll be about all from you, Betty!” said her father in a cold voice that was so new to him that he felt frightened at it. Was he actually talking to his little Betty this way?

“On second thought, you needn’t go out anymore until we’ve had a thorough understanding on this subject and a few others,” he added.

Betty stared at him in astonishment for an instant and then burst into a mocking laugh:

“Try and do it!” she sneered. “How do you get that way, Chet? It isn’t in the least agreeable.”

“Now Betty,” began her mother anxiously, “don’t hurt your father. You know he didn’t mean—”

“He better not!” said Betty imperiously.

“We gotta boy in our school ut says ya don’t havta obey parunts,” broke forth ten-year-old John. “He says, ‘What they gotta do about it?’ He says they ain’t got any more right ta say what ya shall do an’ what ya shan’t ‘n we have. He says we all got the same rights—”

“John, leave the room this minute!” said his father sternly.

Johnny looked up aghast, his well-loaded fork halfway to his lips. He was not used to hearing his father speak like that.

“Go!” said Thornton.

Johnny hastily enveloped the forkful.

“But I was just gonta tell you about the club we got. It’s called ‘Junior Radicals.’ We—”

“Johnny, your mouth is too full to talk,” pleaded the distressed mother.

“Go!” There was something in his father’s voice that Johnny Thornton had never heard before. He made sure of another forkful of chicken stuffing and reached for a second hot biscuit as he rose reluctantly from his chair, but his father’s hand came out in a grip like a vise and rendered his small sinewy wrist utterly useless. The biscuit dropped from his nerveless fingers dully on the tablecloth, and Johnny Thornton walked hastily toward the door, a little faster than his feet could quite keep up, propelled by a power outside his own volition. He had never known his father could be so tall and strong.

“Great cats!” remarked Betty contemptuously as the dining room door closed sharply. “Chester must be crazy! I never knew him to be so off his feed before! I’m going to get out of the picture before anything more happens. Tra-la-Eleanor. I wish you joy! You better beat it yourself till the weather clears.”

“But Betty! Your father said—” began Mrs. Thornton.

But Betty was gone out through the kitchen and up the back stairs to her room. Her closing remark as she sped through the swing door into the pantry was:

“Bilge!”

The door upstairs into Johnny’s room was heard to close firmly and a key to turn in the lock. Then Thornton’s steps came slowly, unsteadily down, almost haltingly, his wife thought. Could Chester have been drinking? But no, of course not. He hated the stuff. He never touched it. It must be business. She ought to have told Betty to be more considerate.

When he opened the dining room door again his face was white as a sheet and his eyes were staring ahead as if he saw a ghost. He marched sternly to his seat and sat down, but he made no attempt whatever to eat. Instead he looked around his depleted dinner table.

“Where is Betty?” he asked in a voice that was husky with feeling.

“Why, I think she’s gone up to her room, dear,” said his wife placatingly.

Thornton’s face did not relax, and Jane who had been biding her time silently, mindful of the fig pudding, which was her favorite dessert, decided to leave while the going was good. But when she slid stealthily from her seat to go out, her father’s voice recalled her.

“Sit down!” he said severely. “And don’t leave the table until dinner is finished.”

Jane stuck up her chin indignantly:

“I was just going up to my room,” she said defiantly. “I’ve got some ‘mportant studying to do.”

“Sit down!” thundered her father uncompromisingly. Jane slid into her seat sullenly.

Mrs. Thornton looked at her husband almost tearfully and explained in a low voice to the sulky girl:

“Daddy comes home tired out and doesn’t want to be worried. He isn’t feeling well, I’m sure. He wants it to be quiet and orderly and not everybody jumping up and running out—”

“He went out himself,” said Jane impertinently.

“Hush!” said the mother with a fearful glance at her husband. But little Doris diverted the attention suddenly, contributing her bit to the conversation, having been turning over her mind for a suitable topic ever since her brother’s summary exit. It seemed the dramatic moment for her to enter the limelight also.

“We got a new book in school today. Our teacher read it to us. It’s a story about a lady that lived in a tree and could do things with her toes just as well as with her hands. And by ‘im by she got to be a real lady and came down outta the tree and lived in a house. She was one of our aunt’s sisters, the teacher said.”

“You mean
an
cestors,” corrected Jane, coming out of her sulks with a giggle to correct the baby of the family.

“No, aunt’s sisters!” insisted Doris. “She ‘estinctly said aunt’s sisters.”

“What does all this mean, Eleanor?” said Thornton, looking at his wife. “Do you mean they are stuffing that kind of bosh down babies? In
school?”

“It’s her science class,” asserted Jane importantly. “They’re just starting to learn about how the earth began, all gases and things you know, and how everything developed of itself, and then animals came, and some of ‘em turned into men. We had it all two years ago, but now they’re beginning it in the first grade.”

“What utter nonsense!” said Thornton angrily. “It’s all well enough for some highbrows to think they believe in evolution if they want to, but they have no right to stuff it down children’s throats, not
my
children, anyway. And in the
public
school. Eleanor, haven’t you taught these children
any
of the Bible?”

“Why, of course, Chester,” quavered his wife soothingly. “They had all the Bible stories read to them. You know about Adam and Eve, darling. Why, Jane you got a prize once in Sunday school for telling the story of creation. How can you let Daddy think that you don’t know—”

“Oh, of course I remember all that, Mud,” said the thirteen-year-old, “but that’s all out of date. Didn’t you know, simply
nobody
believes the Bible anymore? My teacher said the other day, simply
nobody
that really knows
any
thing believes it anymore. She said there were some places in the New Testament that were true to history, but the rest was all fanciful, kind of like legends and things, especially all that about Adam and Eve. It was just like mythology, you know. Didn’t you and Daddy
know
that? I suppose you haven’t been paying attention to what went on since you stopped school, you know, but my teacher says almost
nothing
in the Bible is true anymore. It isn’t
scientific!
Why, even the children in the elementary school know that!”

“That will do!” thundered Thornton furiously. “Eleanor, this is unspeakable! Why haven’t you known what kind of bosh our children were being taught? Where are the rest of them? I want to sift this matter out and know just where we stand! This is
awful!
Send for them all to come back! I want to see them right away.”

Mrs. Thornton looked distressed. She had been listening to Betty’s tiptoeing feet overhead, and now she knew they had ceased. She was even sure she had heard the creak of the back stairs and the opening of the kitchen door. Therefore she stalled:

“Suppose we go away from the table, anyway, Chester,” she suggested, “so that the maid can clear away. You’ve scarcely eaten a thing. Jane, you and Doris take your pudding up to the sitting room while your father finishes. He is all tired out and ought not to be disturbed while he eats. Take another cup of coffee, Chester, dear. Your nerves are all worn out. You must have had a hard day today. I’m afraid things haven’t gone as well as you hoped at the office. But never mind, dear! Don’t let it worry you. Whatever comes, we’ve got each other. Remember that and be thankful.”

“Got each other!” exclaimed Chester strickenly. “But
have
we?”

“Of course we have,” cheered his wife. “Now dear, drink that hot coffee and you’ll feel better. Come, and then we’ll go into the library and you’ll lie on the couch and tell me all about it. Then by and by when you are rested I’ll call the children and you can talk to them, or perhaps tomorrow morning. You know you are in no frame of mind to talk calmly to them, and in the classes I’ve been attending about child rearing they say it is simply fatal to talk excitedly to a child, that it arouses antagonism, and that really is the worst thing we can do. You know really they are human beings like ourselves and have to be given a chance to express themselves. They won’t stand for radical discipline such as you and I passed through. Really Chester, the children of today are quite,
quite
different from a few years ago. You know things have changed, and young people have
developed
. There is a more independent attitude—”

“Stop!” cried Thornton. “Stop right there! Eleanor, if you have swallowed that rot whole and are going to take that attitude I shall go mad.
Express
themselves! I feel as if the whole universe has gone crazy.”

“But Chester, dear, you are overwrought—!”

“I should say I am overwrought. Eleanor, you don’t know what you are talking about. Listen!”

“Well, drink your coffee,” she said soothingly. “At least drink your coffee before I ring for Hetty, and then we’ll go into the other room and you shall tell me everything. You poor dear, I’m afraid you are going to be sick!”

“I don’t want any coffee! I can’t eat! I tell you, Eleanor, I must see the children! I must see
Betty
first! No, I can’t tell you anything till I have a talk with Betty. It is too dreadful! I want to understand the whole thing better before I tell you. Come, quick! Get Betty. I must see her at once.”

She tried to persuade him to lie on the couch and let her cover him up before she called her daughter. She poked the fire into a blaze and stalled for time by turning the hall light out so it would not shine in his eyes, but he pranced back and forth and refused to even sit down.

So at length she went upstairs to call Betty.

But Betty’s room was a whirlpool of garments: little silk doodads, trailing negligees, powder puffs, with an eddy of diminutive high-heeled shoes in one corner and a strapped pile of schoolbooks submerged in a chair under a torn evening frock. But no Betty!

It was as her mother had expected. Betty had made good her escape.

Mrs. Thornton passed through the confusion with deft hands, picking up and straightening as she went, hanging the flimsy little inadequate rags her daughter called clothing on the hooks in her closet, sweeping the clutter of ridiculous shoes into a quiet bag on the door, smoothing the bed, tidying the bureau. She stalled again for time. If only Chester would fall asleep he would be more reasonable. He would not blame the children. Something terrible must have happened in the business world that he should come home like this. He was usually so fond of the children, so interested in all that they had to tell about school life, so proud of Betty’s looks, and Jane’s music.