The Prodigal Girl (5 page)

“Get in!” he said sternly. His voice sounded like a knell. Jane tried to summon a natural voice:

“I’ve left my coat and hat behind,” she said, as if it were quite a natural thing to have done in a corner drugstore at ten o’clock at night. “I’ll have to go back and get them, Daddy.” Her voice had reached almost a cheerful tone now.

“Get in!” commanded her father.

“But Daddy! It’s my best hat and coat!”

Thornton shoved his daughter forcefully into the seat and slammed the car door shut.

Jane began to cry. She was angry at herself for crying, but she could not keep the tears back. She had never seen her indulgent father act like this. It must be true, as Betty had said, that Daddy had gone crazy.

“I’m cold!” she chattered.

He paid no heed to her.

As the car turned around she saw Emily Carter come to the door to watch her with an awed, sober look; then she heard a jeering laugh ring out from one of the boys, and her face grew crimson with mortification. He had no right! Her daddy had no right!

“I’ve got to stop at Emily’s and get my books,” she said as they whirled down the block. “I’ve got very important lessons to study for tomorrow.”

“You should have thought of that before you went down to display yourself before the loafers of the town,” he said curtly.

“Why, Daddy, I only went down for a minute. Emily had to get some toothpaste her mother had sent her for this afternoon and she had forgotten, and then the boys asked me to give the dance we are going to have in our school play!”

Thornton was silent and grim, driving hard. They flashed past the dark Carter house, and Jane put a detaining hand on his arm.

“This is the house, Daddy! I really must get those books. I’m going to have to sit up late now to get done. There’s a test tomorrow—”

“You’re mistaken!” said her father crisply. “The test was tonight! And you
have
failed! You needn’t worry about your books. You’ll not need them anymore. You’re done with that school forever!”

“Daddy!”

Jane sat frozen in silence, trying to fathom the horror of what had just been said to her. Did it mean that Daddy was so angry he was going to send her away to boarding school? She would like that! It would be a regular lark. But what if he were to have her taught at home! That would be unbearable!

They stopped abruptly at home, and Thornton took his daughter by the arm firmly, almost painfully, and escorted her to the house.

Eleanor was still sitting on the lower step of the stair, weeping. She looked up anxiously as the door opened, hoping, half expecting Betty, almost afraid to look at her face. But instead there stood Jane, with a sullen, defiant, frightened look and tears on her face, rolling slowly, heavily down from wide eyes.

“Why, Janie, dear, you didn’t go out on a night like this without a coat, did you?” her mother asked, springing to her feet anxiously.

“No,” said Jane fiercely. “Daddy wouldn’t wait till I got them on, and I’m all in a shiver.”

“Why, Chester, that was dangerous!” said his wife, turning worried eyes on him.

“So was the place I found her in,” said Thornton grimly. “Eleanor, put her to bed, and
watch
her till I get home. It isn’t safe to let her out of your sight.”

“Why, Chester! You frighten me!” said his wife, her hand fluttering to her breast. “Where did you find her?”

“I’m sorry,” said Thornton gravely, “but it was necessary to frighten you. I found her in the corner drugstore ‘expressing’ herself for the benefit of a lot of lewd fellows who were cheering her on and calling out dirty remarks.”

Mrs. Thornton’s eyes sought Jane’s sullen ones in horror:

“Janie!”

Jane’s eyes went down to the toes of her small shoes, and she shrugged her shoulders indifferently.

Thornton looked at Jane in a kind of helpless despair.

“Now, I’m going out to hunt our other daughter,” he said in a choking voice. “Goodness knows what I’ll unearth this time. We seem to have run amok.”

He paused and looked at his wife compassionately, as if he would like to say something comforting, when there wasn’t anything comforting to say. Then he turned toward the door.

“Well,”—with a tone that had a choking sound—“I must go—” “Don’t you think, Chester, don’t you think maybe you’d better wait?” began his wife anxiously. “Betty will be sure to be home soon now—”

A look of finality came quickly into his face. “No!” he said and was gone, then opened the door again to say: “If Chris comes in, tell him to wait up till I get back. I’ve
got
to see him!”

Five minutes later Thornton parked his car in a long line that stood around the athletic field of the high school and took his way up the broad steps to the assembly hall where the dance was being held.

“Strange!” he said to himself.
“Dancing
in a school! When I was young they used to say such things detracted from the studies and made the student unfit for work the next day.”

The stairs were bordered with couples seated close together holding hands, giggling, eating candy, smoking a furtive cigarette. He thought he saw a girl’s delicate fingers toying with one, but of course he was mistaken. Not a high school girl, openly like this. Not in Briardale, anyway. They might do it out in the world but not in Briardale!

He scrutinized the faces as he came slowly up the stairs, which somehow seemed to be a mile long and very steep.

Of course Betty would not be sitting out on the stairs. Her mother would have brought her up better than that. And yet, young people were thoughtless. He might find her there. He remembered when he and her mother used to slip out and sit on stairs, and talk. There was nothing terrible in that—unless—unless she was talking to that young hound of a Weston! He couldn’t bear it if he found her with that boy! She must be made to understand that she must never speak to him again. He was like pitch. It was a desecration to even think of him.

The sound of jazz from the high school orchestra led him on. He reached the door of the assembly hall, with difficulty, through the giggling, roughhousing crowd of boys and girls, and looked about anxiously for Betty. Several couples were dancing in the center of the great floor, dancing in a way that brought disgust to the father’s heart. Was that the kind of thing his Betty had been going out for! Did Eleanor know how they danced today? He drew a deep breath and took a resolve. If he ever got Betty out of this—

But he got no further, for he heard a furtive whisper just behind him:

“Oh, there’s Betty Thornton’s old man! Won’t she be furious! I’ll bet he’s come spying on her! Great cats! If my dad would try to put anything like that over on me, wouldn’t I kick!”

He turned and looked in the speaker’s face, a pretty, painted, bold face, coarse in its bravery of cheap taffeta, flimsy tulle, and lengthy earrings, a girl who lived two doors from his home and whom he had known by sight for several years.

She met his gaze defiantly, coldly.

“Can you tell me where to find Betty, Clara?” he asked, hating himself for having to ask her, yet not knowing where else to turn.

“Betts? Oh, why, she must be round here somewhere,” answered the girl carelessly. “Did you see Thorny anywhere, Jim?” she called to a young man who was ambling past with a tray of ice-cream dishes.

“I sure did,” grinned the boy. “She and Dud just passed by. Dud said it was too slow here, and they were going up to Todd’s Tavern where they could get something real.”

Something familiar in the set of shoulders held Thornton’s stern glance as the youth passed, with a leer, nimbly on among the dancers. It was the other boy from the seat in front on the evening train!

He watched him for an instant, as some strong lion in a temporary cage might have watched his prey, and then turned to go down the stairs. It became apparent to him that a group of young people were watching him and snickering openly. He held his head haughtily and compelled himself to walk steadily down the stairs, although they seemed to have become insecure and to rise and fall with each step. He was conscious of holding the words of the lad suspended in air, as if they were something like a missile flung to hurt him, which he had caught just in time, but which had come close to wounding him fatally. It was as if he had yet to sense the import of their meaning, though the words had been going over and over like a chime of horrid bells in his brain, keeping time with his every move.

When he reached the outside steps he stood still, looking up to the quiet stars overhead, trying to steady his mind and understand. Repeating the lad’s answer over now, alone with the stars, he took home the terrible truth. Betty was out alone with that filthy youth, Dudley Weston! Todd’s Tavern! They could go to no worse place in the whole region round about. It bore a reputation that stood for all the modern sins!

He had just sense enough left to hope that Jim Harkness might have been trying to pull over some kind of a sickly joke. From the tone of his conversation earlier in the evening, and from the leer on his face when he was asked where Betty was, he could easily judge that a joke of just that kind would appeal to Jim Harkness. In fact, wasn’t Jim the kid that used to carry Betty’s books to school a couple of years ago? Perhaps there was a tinge of jealousy in the affair.

With momentary relief from his fears he drew a deep breath and pressed his white lips firmly.

Nevertheless, there was no time to be lost. If Betty had gone to a place like that she must be rescued before she could step a foot inside it. Fortunately he had a car that bore the reputation of being able to outdistance anything on the road, though he seldom had occasion to put it to the test. But now as he climbed into it, he threw in his clutch with a determination that made the engine jump.

Out at the school gate he came to a sudden halt and accosted a row of elementary school boys sitting on the curb smoking in the dark.

“Did you see a car drive out here a few minutes ago?”

“Yep! A Knowland Six! One eye on the blink. Taillight no good either!” they responded definitely.

“Which way did it go?” Thornton asked as if life and death hung on the answer.

“Out de pike!” was the prompt answer.

Grimly Thornton gave rein to his steed.

Chapter 4

T
he car shot forward like a racehorse suddenly put to track. It curveted around the next corner and dashed into the pike at fifty-five, barely escaping a darkened bus on the express lane from Washington, threaded a precarious way between two Fords dizzily driven, and an old-fashioned coupe piloted and passengered by elderly frightened women. He careened down the long hill by the Plush Mill, across the trolley tracks as if they were hurdles, and rocked up the hill beyond the bridge crazily. If he had seen another man drive as he was driving he would have said he was out of his mind. And perhaps he was, he thought, and strained his eyes to see ahead, watching for the fluctuating wink of a red taillight.

Occasionally as he fled along through the darkness, leaving the town behind and penetrating farther and farther into the country district, he wondered vaguely what had happened to the satisfaction he had felt as he entered the evening train on his homeward way that night. Surely, all of this was a bad dream! Surely he would wake up soon and discover he was still on his train, dozing, and hear Briardale called out and hurry home to tell Eleanor about the car he was going to buy for Betty.

But no. The memory of the scene at the dinner table spoiled that. It passed before his mind like a panorama. A series of catastrophes, each one in itself enough to lay a burden on a father’s heart. Even the twins seemed to have suddenly sprung into activity with their rationalistic talk. He must look into that school at once. Some fool teacher was likely amusing herself teaching such rubbish to the children. Some half-baked little country girl who had gathered a few wild ideas in college, which she thought were higher education. He would find out who it was and have her fired at once. What was the school board thinking about? But of course they did not know. He would see that they were informed before another day dawned. He probably ought to have accepted that nomination as a member of the board last spring instead of pleading that he had not time. Well, this was his punishment. But if he
had
accepted the position he would have done his work better than the others seemed to have done. Nobody who taught things like that would have got by him.

These ideas served to take his thoughts for a few minutes from the awful fear that was growing in his mind about Betty as he plunged on in the darkness, yet each time he sighted a blinking red light ahead his heart would fail him again, and a smothering sensation between horror and fierce anger would rise and almost choke him. The blood seemed to be all in his head and beating through his eyes, as if he were on his own feet running a race. His heart could not keep up and felt as if it would burst. He wondered if perhaps he might be having a stroke. But he must not, he must not, not till Betty was safe.

He overtook three different cars ahead, only to find them filled with staid elderly couples or family parties sleepily jogging home.

He had almost persuaded himself that Betty was safely at home by this time instead of driving off across the country with a wild youth. That was it, of course. Dudley Weston had been taking Betty home. Betty would never consent to go to a place like Todd’s Tavern.

Betty was too well bred for a thing like that. Of course she would not know what kind of a place she was being taken to, but she would understand that it was too late at night to go off on a drive anywhere with a young man. It wasn’t respectable. Betty would have made him take her home, of course. Eleanor had said she would be there pretty soon. Eleanor had seemed very sure. He was a fool of course to have taken this long jaunt on a chance word of a jealous boy who wished to put something over on him.

He had reached this point when he came in sight of Todd’s, set far back from the road in the midst of a lonely grove on the top of a little hill, in a wild and lonely countryside. There were no lights anywhere in sight in any direction on hill or valley, save the fringe of red and yellow glare that edged Todd’s Tavern. They blared through the night with a garish lure that sent the shudders down Thornton’s back. That
his
child should be taken to a place like that even against her will was unthinkable! He would
somehow
have that Weston fellow arrested!