The Prodigal Girl (32 page)

“Oh, God!” she cried. But the awful curses of Dudley as he tried to direct his car into the road drowned out her voice. Had He heard? Had God heard?

And then the car turned over and all was blotted out.

Chapter 23

B
ack in Vermont there was consternation when the word came that the young woman who had answered the description of Miss Thornton, and who had been seen by several employees of the railroad in the station during the day, was not to be found. She had been paged for half an hour and had not been found.

“I knew I ought to have telegraphed your father the first moment we found she was gone!” cried Eleanor with a gasp of fear. “He will never forgive me! Our little girl gone and I didn’t let him know! And now it is getting dark, and where can she be?”

She dropped down on the hard old sofa in the library and buried her face in her hands.

“Oh, good night, Muth! We’re doing the best we can! If Betts was really in Springfield she can’t be so far away from here yet! Likely she’s gone to a hotel. I’ll phone all the hotels and find out! You know we can get a detective in Springfield and get right on the job, if you’re willing!”

“No,” said Eleanor, springing to her feet. “I must tell your father before we do another thing. He will likely be in the office by this time. If he caught that train this morning he would have gone right on through. Call up the office—”

“But it’s Saturday. The office is closed.”

“Somebody might be there. Try it. Your father would be there, I’m sure, if he has reached the city.” So Chris tried the office.

But only the janitor answered. Yes, the office was closed. No, there wasn’t anybody there! No, Mr. Thornton hadn’t been in that day. Mr. Thornton was out of town for an extended stay.

“I toldya, Muth,” said Chris, turning to his mother triumphantly. “Now you lemme handle this—”

“No, Chris. You must get the telegraph office and send a telegram to the train. If your father had to stay over in New York—I’ve been thinking it over and I believe he said he might have to stop there to see a man—but if he did stay over he would have taken the four o’clock from the Pennsylvania station. That’s the train he always takes when he goes to New York. You must send a telegram to him on that train. That will get to him before he reaches home, and he will have time to think up what to do.”

“Great cats, Muth, what can we say in a telegram that won’t publish the whole thing to the world? He won’t understand without a whole letter. Now I ask you, what can he do away off there?”

“Your father always knows what to do,” said Eleanor firmly. “This is no time to worry about the world, but anyway nobody on the train will know anything about us. Here’s a telegram I’ve written out. Send it quick, and then get Mr. Chalmers’s number and ask for him. I want to talk to him. We can confide in him. If he isn’t home get some other member of the firm. I’ve
got
to have help at once!”

But Chester did not get Eleanor’s telegram. He was not on the four o’clock train from New York. He was speeding across his home city in search of a man who was about to leave for a Christmas vacation and was a very important factor in the contract that was to be signed. He had no time to send telegrams, nor receive them, and when later he remembered to send a message it merely read: “Business well in hand. Probably shall reach farm Monday night. Will keep you informed.” But the message gave no clue to his whereabouts at the time.

The messages to the members of the firm brought equally poor returns, for everyone seemed to be off somewhere on this last Saturday before Christmas, and the message Eleanor left at each point—“Please have Mr. Thornton call up his wife as soon as he comes in”—lay scattered about Briardale and the city like so many useless fragments. Chester took no time to go anywhere except where he was obliged to go, and the small amount of sleep he snatched was taken at a little inconspicuous hotel where he happened to be when he got done Saturday night, and where he had never stayed before.

So the night came down, the awful first night of Betty’s absence, and still they had managed to get no clue.

Eleanor walked up and down her room, or stared out of the window at the slow-moving flakes that wavered past the window, and thought and shuddered and blamed herself. And then she walked again and thought of the child psychology class and the things the teacher had warned them against. What utter folly they all seemed now, and how well she had followed their lead! “Let a child express itself.”

Well, Betty was expressing herself!

Not once had they told the eager mothers what to do if a child went wrong and brought lifelong sorrow upon herself and her family! They had said if a child used bad words, you must not notice it. It was a phase. It would pass. They had said if a child rebelled against you, you must turn his attention to something else, soothe and engage him elsewhere, lead him to view the question from a pleasanter standpoint. But not once had they said anything about teaching your children right and wrong, teaching them to obey, to respect law and order. No, they had rather decried that attitude. No parent had a right to put limits upon his children. Who was to say what was right or wrong? The child’s own inner sense would ultimately determine those things and so allow the young nature to develop without being warped or hindered or misshapen or biased according to ancient inherited dogmas and superstitions. Oh, she knew the phrases by heart! But they had never told her what to do when a child had gone wrong.

Well, right or wrong, Betty was gone. Where? The mother shuddered and knelt by her bed with wordless prayers upon her lips.

In the early dawn of the Sabbath morning Betty came to her senses with a breath of cold air blowing in her face. Somewhere in the air there was the vanishing sound of a crash, and there seemed to be splinters of glass all about her, for when she put out her hand feebly, she touched something sharp and brittle that crushed under her fingers, and afterward there was blood on her hand and face.

There were two men standing over where she was huddled, and before long they loosened the thing that confined her and lifted her out into the cold morning, stinging sharply on her cheeks, snow falling in great splotches on her forehead and eyes.

There was a large car standing a few feet away, and they opened the door and put her on the backseat, tenderly, as though there was something sad and terrible about it. Then they went back and left her there alone. She watched them idly, apathetically, from the window of the car, licking the snow from her lips where it had fallen and wondering what it was all about. She could see the two men working, bending over in the snow, lifting something, pulling, lifting again, and then they came toward her bearing something between them. They stopped and shook their heads and looked toward her, and laid it down, gently, oh, very gently, almost reverently. She wondered!

Why, it looked like Dudley! Where—? How? Where was she?

The two men came and asked her if she could sit up. It had not occurred to her that she was lying down until then. She said yes, and her voice sounded weak and far away, with a tremble in it. She wondered what was the matter with her.

The men lifted her into the front seat and tucked a rough blanket around her. They went back and picked up the thing that looked like Dudley and brought him and laid him in the backseat of the car, being very careful about it. She caught a glimpse of his face. It was ghastly, and streaked with blood. One arm hung limply down, and his hand was bleeding, too. Was there a cut across his cheek? She might have turned to look again, but she felt so weak and tired, and somehow her soul was revolted with the sight of him. She tried to shake off the daze and think back. Where had they been? What had happened? How had they got here in the road? She looked over to the broken car, scattered on the roadside, its bright-painted body splintered like a child’s toy, its fenders ripped off and bent out of shape. How long ago was it that she and Dudley had been careening down that hill?

She closed her eyes with a dizzy memory and swooned away.

A long time afterward, it seemed, she came to herself again, and they were driving along a smooth road. There was snow only at the sides of the road now. The roadway was clear, and there were many cars coming and going, and houses and other buildings along the way.

The two men were talking. One of them was driving the car and the other sat in the backseat with the thing that was Dudley, holding him. She was glad she could not see behind her. She did not have to look. It sent a great wave of sickness over her to think of it. She heard the men saying something about a hospital. The nearest hospital.

“It might be a question of minutes whether the lad lives or dies,” one said. “He’s pretty far gone!”

Something froze within her. Suddenly the whole ugly business flashed across her consciousness. She and Dudley had been running away to get married, and they had come to this! And perhaps Dudley would die! Then would she be a murderer? And have her picture in the paper! And a terrible trial! And all the family have to come and hear the whole thing told out! They would tell how she had dropped her suitcase out of the window and stolen out of the house before daylight. They would have great big headlines in the newspapers: H
IGH
S
CHOOL
S
ENIOR
R
UNS
A
WAY WITH
Y
OUTH
W
HO
D
IES IN
S
MASHUP!
Father and Mother would be dragged through all that!

She thought of herself as she had been the night of the last high school dance, dressed in her rose petal taffeta. Betty Thornton, the star pupil of the school, the acknowledged beauty, the belle of the school! Herself, Betty, come to this!

She began to watch the way with a wild fascination. Dare she jump out and run away? Oh, she must not go to a hospital and have them ask her questions. She must never, never be discovered! And yet! Could Betty Thornton run away? When she had let Dud get into this mess, she would have to stand by!

She must have swooned away again, for the next time she knew anything the car had stopped in the din of a city street. In the distance was the outline of tall buildings against the sky, and in the immediate foreground loomed a many-storied brick building, which she seemed to understand was the hospital.

Some men in white linen coats hurried out, and two others came with a stretcher. She heard one of the men in the car say: “I thought we’d never get to New York with ‘em! This here lad is far gone!”

So they were in New York at last! This was the way they had arrived! They had meant to be married in New York, and now Dudley was dying, dead perhaps already! It was ghastly! It couldn’t be real! It must be she was asleep, dreaming. Perhaps she was really back in her bed at the farm having the nightmare!

The men in the linen coats had opened the car door and stepped in. They were lifting out Dudley and laying him on the stretcher. She tried to keep her eyes shut, but something made her look, and as she looked Dudley moaned, moving his swollen, cut lips. There was more blood on his face. It was horrible!

She closed her eyes and dropped her head sideways on the back of the seat and listened as they carried the stretcher with its ghastly burden up the steps and into the great building.

A hand touched her forehead, and then another hand was laid firmly about her shoulders. She looked up and saw a white-robed nurse looking at her kindly.

She looked down startled and saw a stretcher waiting to take her into the hospital. There was a smear of blood on one edge. She started to her feet in fright.

“Oh, no! I can walk!” she said. “Let me go home!”

“Are you able to walk?” asked the nurse kindly and helped her out of the car.

Betty’s feet felt strange and weak. Her knees trembled. She stood uncertainly. One of the helpers came forward and put his arm about her, and the nurse helped her on the other side; so she walked, tremblingly, up those awful steps and into that grim building where they had taken that huddled form that was Dudley. Would she have to look at him?

The nurse put her into a wheelchair and pushed her down a long hall to an elevator. They went up several flights and she was wheeled down another hall to a little white room where they made her lie down on a white iron bed.

“But I’ve got to go—” protested Betty as she sank back on the pillow.

“The doctor must examine you,” said the nurse, unfastening her coat and taking her hat off.

An interval followed in which Betty drowsed and realized nothing. Then a doctor and another nurse came in and gave her a thorough examination, looking for broken bones. “Does that hurt?” they asked her.

Betty assured them that it did not, although she had not much of an idea what it all meant. She had a feeling that she must please them all so that they would go away and let her alone and she might steal away from them. It was terribly hot around her now, and she was one big ache from head to foot.

“Mainly shock,” she heard the doctor say. “Keep her quiet. Give her some nourishment. I’ve left a prescription.”