The Prodigal Girl (9 page)

“Oh, don’t, Chester!” begged Eleanor. “I can’t bear you to take it like that! I
have
been worried,” she confessed. “They’ve told such terrible things at the child rearing class. Really, you’d hardly believe—”

“After tonight I can believe
anything
!” said the father grimly.

“But they warned us not to oppose the children,” Eleanor hastened to explain. “They said this was a new generation, and we must deal with them carefully and not antagonize them. They said it was a phase that would pass, a phase of adolescence!”

“Rubbish!” Chester snorted. “Rubbish! And you swallowed that? Eleanor, I’m surprised!”

“Well, no, I didn’t exactly swallow it,” said Eleanor, mopping her hot, weary face with a soppy handkerchief. “I thought about it, and I’ve been very careful. Of course I’ve always tried to put
positive
thoughts, good suggestions forward, and not negative ones. They say you must not say ‘don’t’ anymore, that it merely rouses antagonism.”

“Bosh!” said Chester angrily. “They all need a good, sound spanking! A lot of them! We’ve been all wrong, Eleanor! We’ve been too easy! I see it now. And those women in that club, Eleanor, they need to be spanked, too! They weren’t spanked enough when they were young. They are fools, Eleanor! What in thunder did you ever see in a bunch like that? I declare, I shall go crazy,
insane
, if I don’t get out of this town before tomorrow night!”

“Of course,” said Eleanor, suddenly rousing to remember that her husband was sick, and the doctor had warned her that he must be kept very quiet and not get excited. “Chester, if you will just lie down and go to sleep now, I understand it all, and I’ll get ready to go. I’ll be ready whenever you say! There, dear! Do lie down! It’s all right now, I understand. It’ll be
all right!”

Chester Thornton lay down, suddenly feeling very weak and tired, and murmured:

“Eleanor, you’re the best little woman a man ever had for a partner!” And in spite of all her troubles, Eleanor Thornton somehow felt her heart warm and knew that
everything
was not quite lost.

She laid a soft hand on the hot forehead of her husband and was rewarded in a few minutes by hearing his low, steady breathing and knew he had fallen asleep.

But she herself lay down in a daze and could not even close her eyes.

Over and over again she heard the awful words of arraignment of her children. Over and over she rehearsed certain sentences of Chester’s, which she took to relate to his business affairs, and her heart sank lower and lower till there seemed no glimmer of light at all.

But so curious a hold has money and the things of this world on a human heart, that strangely enough the loss of the money loomed almost as large in Eleanor Thornton’s scheme of things as did the misdemeanors of her children. Not that she did not hate sin as much as her husband, and shrink from having it come near her own, but that she simply could not believe that things were as bad as Chester had said. Chester was excited and weary and had seen things writ large. Chester would learn later that the children were not quite gone to perdition yet. They had only been experimenting a little and would soon come to their senses. In a healthy atmosphere these things would pass off. And of course, in a way, there was some advantage even in hiding themselves in a desolate Vermont farmhouse for a time.

But the morals of her children did not deeply trouble her as much as the immediate problem of how they would take their father’s failure and what she was going to do herself about many little embarrassing details that were going to arise in the morning if Chester carried out his program of leaving the city at once.

There, for instance, was her civic committee. It was supposed to meet with her tomorrow, and the psychology class immediately following. The little cakes that she would serve with tea and bonbons were even now reposing in the tin cake cupboard, each one perfect in its snowy icing.

There was her bridge club the next day, and her old friend Genevieve Whitely just back from Japan and coming! And there was the committee for decorating the church at Christmas. It was to meet that Sunday night, and the plans were all made. She was chairman! She would have to write out the directions fully. No one else would understand, and the greens were all ordered. They would wonder why she had bought so many yards of laurel unless she drew a plan for the festoons. And there was the dressmaker! She would be annoyed, because she had changed three customers to give her these special days next week. There was Chalkley’s bill she had promised to pay at once. She must not forget to make out the check the first thing when she got up.

So heavily did all these things weigh upon her that she almost contemplated getting up at once and beginning, only that she knew it would be sure to arouse Chester, and he really must get his sleep. Before long when he was surely sound asleep, she would just slip out and make out some lists, so that she wouldn’t forget anything.

There would be all the children’s clothes to pack, for they wouldn’t have sense enough to select the right things. Betty would want to take all her party dresses, of course, and right then there would be a conflict if she tried to explain what kind of a place they were going to. They would all rebel at flannel underwear and woolen stockings. Thank goodness there was a whole trunk full of things like that stored away in the attic, packed safely in camphor, and all clean and mended. She had intended to get them out and send them in some missionary box pretty soon. They were put away one spring before it was certain that flannel was taboo for the rest of the time. She foresaw that she must pack such things without the knowledge of the children or they would manage some way to throw them out. Then there were the galoshes. They all had new ones, but she must not forget them.

She began to enumerate the list on her fingers: “Notes, telephone, checks, flannels, galoshes—” trying to relate one to the other in such fashion that she could remember them. If she only had a pencil and paper.

She reached stealthily out in the dark to see if she had left her little notebook on the bedside table and rejoiced to find it under a magazine. Carefully she drew it toward her. Yes, the pencil was inside.

She turned to a back page of the book where she knew nothing was written and began to set down the items, writing as well as she could by sense of feeling, hoping it would be readable in the morning. At last when she had written all she could think of, she put the book back on the table with a sense of relief and closed her eyes. It was a mountain of work to be accomplished in one short morning, but she thought she could do it if it was thoroughly organized.

She decided to get up as soon as daylight came and go up to the attic while the household still slept, filling the old suitcases with flannel underwear, old sweaters, and woolen stockings, and thus escape any chance of argument on that score. Then after breakfast she would make the children—No, that would entail constant argument if they did it. Better get them out of the way. That was it. She would arise
before
daylight and write her notes: write the ladies of the committees, and the bridge club, and a substitute for her Sunday school class, that she had been suddenly called away. Write her checks, and write as many notes instead of telephone calls as she could possibly get done before the children awoke. Then she would send the children with the notes and get them out of the way, leaving free time for her to select the things that were to go along. She could rush through it by going through every closet and bureau drawer systematically.

She meant to keep Chester in bed till the last minute possible.

She was just trying to decide how to tell the children of the sudden cataclysm that had befallen them, or whether to let Chester do it, when most unexpectedly she fell asleep. And when she summoned her thoughts and opened her eyes the sun was streaming broad across her bed, and Chester was not in the room!

Chapter 7

S
he sat up in a panic and called him, but there was no answer. The whole house seemed to be most silent. Oh, she had overslept! And Chester had escaped!

She looked at the little clock on the bureau, and it was quarter past eight! With sudden premonition she sprang up, threw her robe about her shoulders, slipped her feet into slippers, and went down the hall to find the escaped invalid. But there was no one in the hall or bathroom. The children’s doors were all open, and no one answered her call.

She hurried downstairs to the dining room, but there was no one there. The table showed signs of a few hurried breakfasts, but no one answered when she called again.

She went out to the kitchen, and Hannah was just emerging from the back kitchen, her arms full of milk bottles and fresh loaves of bread from the baker’s cart that usually passed about this hour.

“Oh, are you ready for your breakfast, Mis’ Thornton?” asked Hannah, quite in her every morning usual tone.

“Why, Hannah, where is Mr. Thornton? Did he come downstairs?

I must have overslept!”

It began to seem to her that she must have dreamed all those awful things that had happened last night. Probably none of them were true. Probably they were not going away to Vermont this morning, and all was as usual.

But Hannah broke that illusion.

“Yes, ma’am, Mr. Thornton was down at half past five. I was up because I’d forgot to put the note in the milk bottle to leave that cream for whipping. I give him a cup of coffee right at once, and he went down to the office. He said he couldn’t wait, but I made him eat some bread and butter and scrambled eggs, and while he was eating he told me I was to put up a lunch, a good big one, so I got the sandridges all made, ham, an’ chicken, an’ jelly ones. I used that half a roast chicken was left from last night. You all didn’t half eat yer dinners an’ there was plenty. I got some little blackberry tarts in the oven now, and I’ve made a sponge and a nut cake. I guess you’ll do. And there’s some o’ that spice cake left, too. Mister Chris he likes that. An’ I’m boilin’ the eggs now fer hard boils—”

“Oh, Hannah!” cried the frantic mistress. “You’re an angel! And to think I overslept when I was so very anxious to get down before anyone else.”

“‘S awright!” said Hannah indulgently. “The mister said I wasn’t to disturb you till half past nine. He said you was all tuckered out an’ needed the sleep.”

Eleanor gasped.

“Oh, he ought to have woken me up! I don’t see how I’m ever to accomplish everything. Hannah, do you know where the children are?”

“Why I rackum they’ve went to school,” said Hannah placidly. “I didn’t say nothin’ to ‘em. Miss Betty she come down late as us’l an’ drunk two cups of coffee an’ beat it. Jane she was down furst off, soon’s her pa got outta sight, said she had some lessums to study an’ she’d lef’ her books over ta Nemly’s.”

“But didn’t they see their father, didn’t he tell them—”

“I guess not, Mis’ Thornton. They didn’t come down till he was gone. The twins come down just after Jane, and I scrambled ‘em some eggs, and they went. Come to think I don’t know if Mr. Chris come at all. I ain’t heard him—”

Eleanor caught her breath and did some swift thinking.

“Oh, all right, thank you, Hannah,” she said and turned back upstairs.

Perhaps it was just as well that the children were out of the way for the time being. She would get a lot done toward the packing before they knew, and forestall
all
contention. Of course she would have to do the work single handed, but perhaps that was easier. And if worst came to worst she could cut out the telephone calls and send telegrams on the way saying she had been suddenly called away.

She dressed hastily and fairly flew up to the attic.

It took but a few minutes to sort out the woolen things and dump them into the suitcases that stood close at hand, to pile a few extra blankets and coverlets at the head of the stairs ready to be taken down. She added a roll of old linen and sheets. If they had to return to the primitive life, they would need old rags.

She resurrected several old traveling rugs and sweaters and a thick coat or two and began to wonder how all these things were to be carried in one seven-passenger car that would have seven full-sized passengers in it when they were all in. The trunk would have to be reserved for their wearing apparel and would scarcely be adequate even then. But perhaps Chester meant to pack a box and send it express. At any rate, the things were there, ready to put right in somewhere.

She went downstairs with a feeling of relief that the worst item of her list was finished.

Betty’s room was the first to attack. Betty would be the worst to deal with in case she came back soon. Perhaps Chester had sent her to school to get her books and say good-bye.

She went through Betty’s things hurriedly, worriedly. It would seem that there was not much of Betty’s apparel that was suitable for an occasion like this. A few rather expensive casual dresses, one a silk and wool jersey; one silk pleated skirt with an exquisite angora sweater, whose only claim to going along was that the sweater was warm; and a little knitted dress for which she had just been wheedled into paying an exorbitant price. Betty was wearing her most sensible dress today, a rich soft brown. That was well, for she needed something warm and dark for the drive, and it would have been a struggle to make her put it on perhaps if she hadn’t chosen it herself.

As she reasoned, she began to be aware that she was almost afraid of Betty, of what she might say and do. That was not right, of course. Perhaps she ought to have been more firm with Betty. In spite of the child rearing class, she might have made a mistake. Betty used to be a tractable little girl.

There was scarcely any underwear among Betty’s garments that was suitable for a winter life on a northern farm, but mindful of the plentiful stock in the attic she packed a few of Betty’s most sensible underthings, added a couple of pairs of silk stockings for dress up—although what dress up could there possibly be for poor Betty out on that dreary farm? Was Chester doing just the wisest thing? Would not Betty and all of them in fact rebel at such summary tactics? However, it might not last. Chester might find some other way out. Perhaps it would prove to be merely a nice Christmas vacation for them all, and there would be a way out of their catastrophe in a little while.