The Prodigal Girl (37 page)

“Where do you live? Who are you?” he asked in a quiet voice, not at all as if it mattered or were anything to make her excited.

“I’m Betty Thornton,” she babbled. “I live in Briardale when

I’m home, but we’re spending the winter at the old farm beyond Wentworth. I’d better get out and go on. I’m on my way home. It’s getting late and my head is hot and my feet are cold, or else it’s the other way around.”

The young man looked at her anxiously as he took out a suitcase and began to search for things.

“How long have you been on your way?” he asked, pulling out a pair of long gray woolen golf stockings and drawing them over her feet.

“Since the stars came out,” said Betty unintelligibly. “The car rolled down the hill and the glass broke, and there was one star God had in His hand! God was there!”

She looked at the young man anxiously as if she wanted to be assured that she was right.

“Yes, God is always there,” affirmed the young man quietly. “Now, drink this coffee. It’s still hot.”

He unscrewed the top of a thermos bottle and poured out the last few swallows of coffee. He tipped the little metal cup to her lips and she tried to swallow, but the knife was there in her throat.

“There’s ice in my throat,” she explained, looking at him wildly. “I shall have to wait till it melts.”

“Drink the rest of this. It will help to melt the ice!” he urged, and Betty swallowed again, obediently, and sank back on the folded coat he had laid under her head.

She did not open her eyes when he tucked a blanket about her. She felt herself sinking into a deep place now that was as hot as she had been cold a little while before. She was thinking that God’s child had kind eyes. They were nice eyes. They comforted her. She liked to hear him say, “Poor kid!”

While Chester was still upon his knees crying to God, confessing his sin, and praying for mercy on his child, the shabby Ford turned into the lane and plowed its way up to the old farm.

Betty’s mother was the first one at the door.

She had come downstairs to prepare breakfast, anxious for her man, tiptoeing about lest she wake him, not daring to open the library door lest she disturb him, yet anxious to know what he had done during the night.

The throb of the car roused the house. Chris was down almost at once, and Jane, calling from upstairs at the window:

“It’s Betts, Muth! But that’s not Dudley Weston with her! Who can it be?”

Eleanor did not hear Jane. She had flung wide the door and with her hand fluttering to her throat was standing wide eyed looking out, her intuition telling her that this was no ordinary news that was about to be revealed.

“While they are yet speaking, I will hear,” was the promise that Chester Thornton had read as he knelt before the old Bible.

He was still praying, “God, find my little Betty!” when John flung the library door wide and called excitedly:

“Dad, come quick! Betty’s come home, and she’s awful sick!”

They carried Betty upstairs to her bed in the bright Christmas morning, for the clouds had cleared and the sun was sparkling over everything, but Betty did not recognize it. She tossed on the big, cool bed and thought it was a field of snow. She looked in her mother’s face and did not know her. Two white-robed nurses took up their station around her bed before long, and two noted physicians from New York came in consultation with the little country doctor from Wentworth, and all that skill and science could do was being done for Betty Thornton.

Downstairs the Christmas tree, partly decked in its tin stars and paper frills, stood neglected and desolate. The children stole by it without looking. It seemed a desecration now to think about Christmas with Betty so sick.

The white-haired minister drove up every day in the old Ford to find out how the little patient was doing. Once or twice he came up into the room and knelt beside Betty’s bed and prayed, while her mother wept outside the door, and her father stood beside her, his arm about her and a look of utter anguish on his face. The minister’s son did not come in. He did not want to intrude, but he always asked anxiously, “How is she?” when his father came back to the car.

The Christmas season passed without a celebration. Anxiety held the household in its grip. Even John and Doris learned how to sigh, and one day Eleanor caught Jane at the window crying.

“Betty had no right!” she explained when her mother asked what was the matter. “She had no right to spoil Christmas for us all. She oughtta uv thought of other people a little!”

“Hush, darling,” said her mother. “If Betty will only come back I think perhaps she’ll understand that now—”

“Come back?” said Jane with a quick catch of alarm. “Won’t she come back?”

“We hope so, darling, but the doctor isn’t sure!”

“Well, why did she have to do something to upset everybody else? If she wanted to be silly she’d oughtta uv found some way that wouldn’t hurt her family.”

“When people do wrong, Janie dear, they never do it alone. They always bring consequences on other people. We’re all bound up in the bundle of life together, and a man or woman or girl or boy can’t sin in any way without hurting others.”

The day came when Betty turned feverish eyes upon them all and demanded:

“Where is God’s child? I want to see him.”

And for hours she kept asking the same question.

They did not know what she meant, and they sent for the old minister, who knelt beside her bed and prayed.

She stared at him with eager eyes.

“You are nice,” she said, looking at him intently, “but you are not the child of God. He warmed my feet and brought me to my father’s house. I want to see him. I want to ask him a question.”

“Ah,” said the minister, smiling kindly, “I think it is my son David that you mean. He is a child of God. I will send for him!”

And that night David Dunham left his studies in a far city and journeyed up to Vermont in answer to his father’s call, but he did not borrow his roommate’s Ford this time. He caught the fast express, and was at home as soon as steam and rail could bring him.

“Well, sister,” he said, sitting down beside the bed and taking her little hot hand in his, “I am the child of God you sent for. What can I do for you?”

She turned her restless eyes upon him, and her voice was full of pleading:

“Oh, won’t you ask God not to judge me for letting Dudley take that drive?”

“And who is Dudley?” asked David Dunham kindly.

“Dudley is the boy I was going to run away with, and he wouldn’t have got killed if I hadn’t gone.”

There was great distress in her voice. Chester and Eleanor looked at one another in dismay. This was the first they had heard of Dudley. Had Dudley been killed? What terrible experience had their beloved child been passing through without them? Or was this some wild raving of delirium?

The anxious young voice went on:

“Won’t you tell God not to look at me? He keeps looking at me all the time. He thinks I’m unclean! He thinks I’m foul! My father said so. And He keeps looking at me all the time. Won’t you tell Him to stop?”

David Dunham turned his clear eyes on the sick girl. He took hold of the little hot hand that Betty held out pleadingly, with his big cool grasp, and spoke quietly, commandingly, to her:

“Listen, sister! Didn’t you know that Jesus Christ has opened a fountain for sin and for uncleanness? Long ago He shed His blood to make a fountain to wash away our sins. He wants to make you clean, sister, that’s why He is looking at you.”

“But I’m afraid of blood!” she cried, clinging to his hand. “There was blood on Dudley Weston’s head and face. There was blood on the stretcher they carried him on—I couldn’t wash in blood!”

“This is Christ’s blood, sister. It is not human blood. Human blood could not wash us from sin, but Jesus’ blood can wash us whiter than snow!”

“Oh, did you have to be washed, too? It that why you look so much like God?”

“I certainly did, sister. We all have to be washed.”

“But won’t it hurt?” Betty’s eyes were full of fear.

“I’ll say it won’t!” said the young man with a light in his face. “You just ask Him, and it’s done, just like that!”

“You ask Him, won’t you? I’m afraid.”

David Dunham knelt by the side of the bed, the little hot hand still in his, and began to pray:

“Oh, God, our Father, in the name of Jesus, who died to make us clean from sin, please wash this young woman, and make her free from sin forever. Put her behind the blood now, and make her Thy child! Wash her and make her whiter than snow, for Jesus’ sake who loved her and died for her.”

When the prayer was ended she looked in his face eagerly.

“Is that all? Is it done?” she asked.

“Yes, it is done. You can trust Him to take care of all the rest.” “Then I’m going to sleep,” she said with a sigh. “I was afraid to go to sleep before.”

Her hand still in his, she closed her eyes and lay quiet.

Suddenly the big troubled eyes opened again.

“I ought to go back and tell Dudley,” she said anxiously. “Dud doesn’t know, and he’s a
mess!”

“Dudley shall be told,” promised Dunham quickly, and the white lids fluttered down, content.

For a long time David Dunham knelt beside the bed with Betty’s hand lying lightly within his own, his head bowed, his eyes closed. And Betty fell into the first natural sleep she had had since he brought her home.

The doctor had waved them all away and told them that if she could sleep a few hours there was hope, so the house was still as still could be. When Dunham at last came downstairs, his face wearing the look of one who had just had audience with the King, Chester met him with extended hand.

“I can’t thank you enough,” he said, his voice unsteady with feeling. “You’ve saved our little girl’s life the doctor tells me. I shall never forget it. You are a wonderful young man.”

David returned the handshake warmly.

“Don’t say that, Mr. Thornton,” he answered. “Say we have a wonderful God! It was God who reached down and gave peace to your daughter.”

“It was you who made her ready to receive it.”

“No,” said David, “it was the Holy Spirit. He only used me as a humble instrument. And now, Mr. Thornton, who is this Dudley? I promised I would see him.”

Chester’s face grew hard.

“He is a vile little beast who is trying to lead my daughter astray,” answered Chester fiercely. “It is his fault that she is lying there. I would rather have nothing to do with him. He is not worth it. I hope that Betty may never see his face again!”

“I surmised as much from what she told me on the way home, although I do not think she knew what she was saying,” said Dunham. “But still, I’d like to keep my promise. Could you give me his address? I shall not of course mention you in the matter. I would do it wholly on my own initiative.”

“Thank you,” said Chester. “That’s good of you, of course. I would really prefer not to have our family drawn into the matter at all. I do not know yet just how far Betty has involved herself. Of course she was not able to give any connected account of herself. She has been in delirium ever since you brought her home.”

“I surmised from phrases she kept repeating on the way home that there had been some sort of an accident, and that the young man was in a hospital, either dead or dying. She kept saying over and over the name of the hospital and the street it was on. I am sure it must be in New York.”

“You don’t say!” said Chester, startled. “That’s awkward! I suppose somebody ought to find out. The Westons are neighbors of ours in Pennsylvania, but people whom we don’t much care for. We have not had much to do with them. I wonder if they know where their son is. I don’t want to be unchristian, of course, but really the boy has been unspeakable, and I would like to spare Betty any connection with the matter if I could. However, we must not be inhuman—”

“Suppose you let me inquire into things,” offered Dunham. “I am a stranger and can find out how things are before you make any move.”

“Thank you! I’d be grateful for that,” said Chester, bowing gravely, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “You can’t understand, perhaps, how bitter I am toward the young man who led my daughter into a situation like this. Or, if she was partly to blame, as I am afraid she was, who allowed her to go through this awful experience, who has compromised her—”

“I can understand!” said David quickly. “I’d like to go out and thrash him this minute myself. But it seems as if perhaps God may have taken it out of our hands and is dealing with him Himself.”

Chapter 27

D
avid did not lose time in locating the hospital where Dudley Weston was. It had been easy, for Betty had babbled the name and the streets over and over on the way home as if it had been a lesson she was memorizing, and David had written them down lest it might be important later. He inquired about the young man and found that he had just passed through an operation on the skull that they hoped was going to be successful, that he was doing as well as could be expected considering the injuries he had sustained, and that his parents were with him. David asked how soon he might receive visitors and was told that it would be at least a week before anyone outside his family would be admitted.