By the Way of the Silverthorns

by Grace Livingston Hill

  The golden morning-crowned city was slipping past her now, it was almost gone. She gave a fleeting thought to the way it had looked a couple of days ago when she had arrived so hopefully, telling herself that she was going to have a wonderful experience now, all on her own, going about with these wedding people. She had been so eager and anxious lest those cousins of hers would try to frustrate her plans! And they had! How they had frustrated her.

  Her mind went back to the hour when she had arrived in the Hollis house and found conditions so favorable, all the family away for the moment, giving her a chance to get established before they came back and spoiled her plans.

  And then McRae Silverthorn had been in the coveted room she had hoped to get before anybody else came! Always McRae had been the favorite one! She had been frightfully jealous of McRae. Yet she had acknowledged to herself that she would like to be like her. Everybody loved McRae, and she wasn’t in the least disagreeable. Only, well, she had been cute, taking her dress and running away! Minnie had thought that dress was wonderful. Not her style exactly, because from babyhood she had been trained to the showy, tawdry style, instead of the dignified and tailored. But that dress had been wonderful. She just knew when she first glimpsed it how she would look in it herself. She had a gripping desire to try that style and see if it would suit her. The dress that Link Silverthorn had selected and bought for his sister! Think of having a brother who would use his own money to buy a lovely dress like that for his sister!

  And she couldn’t blame McRae for running away with it. Of course, though, she hadn’t believed that it was true when McRae told her it was a present from her brother. It sounded fantastic. But she hadn’t really known much about Link then. She had only seen him once or twice very briefly, and never to talk to. But now she had talked with him. He had told her she was a sinner, and thinking of him in the light of the things he had said to her, an almost utter stranger, she could see that it was probably true that he had selected such a dress.

  Sometime, after she had been trying the new way that Link had suggested for long enough to have it make some difference—if it really did work—she would buy herself a dress something like that one of Rae’s and go back to their city, and maybe call on them, and let them see her in a new light. Would that ever be possible?

  The conductor came around then for the tickets, and diverted her though for a little while, but later she went back to it and enshrined it in her heart like a beautiful goal toward which she meant to press for accomplishment. If she could only go back there and surprise them, have them get to know a new girl in her place, a new Minnie Lazarelle!

  How she hated that name! How she wished she had a new name!

  Well, Minnie wasn’t her real name anyway. Why did she use it?

  Her own name was like her grandmother’s, her father’s mother, Erminie Lazarelle. Why didn’t she go back to it?

  How did it ever happen that she was called Minnie? Her mind went back over the vague years when she was a child.

  Her mother had died when she was only a small mite, but she dimly remembered that she always called her Erminie. It was her stepmother who had started the name Minnie.

  The stepmother had entered her life after an interval of drab years in a nursery school, during which she had seen very little of her father, and nothing of any other relatives.

  The stepmother had been a showy beauty, with a prettily empty face and lazy ways. She had resented the presence of the child and prolonged the days of boarding schools as much as possible, although the girl had always suspected that the reason for her father’s remarriage had been an uneasy mind about the child who was his responsibility.

  She remembered her father as a gravely cheerful man of alternate moods, whose one reverence was for his dead wife. He had made only this one gesture of responsibility toward the child she had left to his care.

  She was not quite sure what her father’s business was, something connected with oil, perhaps, or gold, and western lands. She never had thought about it seriously. It was spoken of as just “business,” and no one ever thought any more about it. There had always been plenty of money, spent in a harum scarum way, never a real need for anything, and no sense of responsibility in connection with finances whatever. The advent of the stepmother had not made any improvement. She was a spender, not for the home and family, but for herself. She collected a handsome wardrobe with no lack of furs and jewels and imported garments.

  And one day she had remarked impatiently:

  “Heck! I can’t be bothered thinking up that weird name of yours every time I want to speak to you. I’m going to call you Minnie after this!” And call she did, often shortening it to Min.

  The girl hadn’t thought much about it in her younger years until it finally became fixed upon her. She had idly suffered it as she grew up, realizing that it had the ugly carelessness of the smart patter of the day, and she let it go at that.

  But now it suddenly stood out before her as something that she loathed, something she would like to get rid of, along with the whole character of her unloved life. Though of course there was no likelihood she could ever get rid of it. People who knew her at all would always call her “Min.” It was something one could never get rid of, a name. One was almost born with a name.

  Still, Link Silverthorn had made it very plain that people didn’t have to stay the way they were born. They might be born again! He had said that those few words she had said, accepting what the great God had done for her, had made her what he called a “born-again” one, and if she was born again why not adopt a new name? Especially when it was a name which was rightfully hers?

  She decided that when she got home she would tell her stepmother and everyone else, that her name was now Erminie, and she wouldn’t pay any attention to anybody who called her Minnie. They might not like it, but she didn’t like the name they had given her and she wouldn’t have it any longer.

  As the day wore on and she continued to sit and stare out the window, more and more the things that Link had said to her came back to her consciousness, and phrases of the subject became plain to her little by little that she had not taken in when they were spoken. “New creature in Christ Jesus.” That was one phrase that he had sued. Suppose she just went on that supposition, that she was a new creature? Then she wouldn’t have to go on being burdened with a personality that hampered her. A personality that she was ashamed of, that she was continually trying to make smarter and more up to date. Of course this new personality wouldn’t be up to date. It was old-fashioned, and she had always despised being old-fashioned. But then it hadn’t got her anywhere to be smart. Perhaps it was just as well to be out of date. Anyway people might not notice her so much.

  It was well that the new-born child of God had ample opportunity to look herself in the face, and begin to see herself as she really was, begin to count her former behavior as sinful. Perhaps God Himself spoke to her as she rode away back into a life she hated, to begin anew. It was a kind of clearing house time for her soul, as if God were taking stock of her, and showing her what had cluttered up her life, spoiled it, and kept Him out of it. A time when the great God came into her consciousness, as the only One who could possibly care for her, or help her, or make her different.

  So, for the best part of two days she went on comparing with God, getting to know by a kind of inward experience that there was a God, and that He was willing to become real in her life.

  The third morning when she woke it came to her that she was almost at her destination. The fact appeared grimly out of oblivion when she opened her eyes and realized that before night she would be back in the ugly house from which she had fled only last week in a vain attempt to get out on her own and have a good time. And now what was she coming back to? Nothing pleasant, that was sure. She’d got to discover a new way of life under very unpleasant conditions, and she didn’t relish the thought of it. She had thought that the way was to run away from it, but it seemed that hadn’t worked. She had
to begin at the bottom and work up.

  Everything looked just as it had when she went away. The house was ugly and ornate. She would never have picked it out, but her stepmother like ornate things.

  She ran up the steps drawing a deep breath to meet whatever was waiting for her, and as she opened the door she heard a dreary wail. A little stepbrother in some sort of trouble. And then an angry snarling voice from a larger stepsister. It might have been the very day she left, from the sounds. Then there came a resounding slap, and a louder wail increasing into a roar of fury.

  “Now you stop that, you old devil-cat you! I’ll write a letter and tell my daddy about you! I’ll go tell a p’liceman you stole my choc’late candy an’ et it up yourse’f. You’re a mean old devil-cat you!” That was Billy, aged three.

  Erminie had a passing wonder as to what Link would think of a little boy talking about the devil that way. A lovely home to arrive in!

  “It wasn’t your candy!” burst forth the angry voice of the sister aged four. “It belonged ta Mom an’ I’m gonta tell her on you, so I am!”

  That was Blossom. Her mouth was still full of the stolen candy.

  “I don’t care how much ya tell! Yer a devil-cat too, that’s what ya are!” The remark was climaxed with a louder roar.

  Then came the voice of the sister aged seven storming down the stairs. “Hey, you kids, shut up! Mom says if ya don’t shut up she’ll come down her an’ skin ya alive.”

  Erminie drew a sick tired breath and shuddered. It was awful getting back into this again. Mariana the seven year old had left the door open and she could see the three angry children, fighting and snarling and roaring at each other, slapping miscellaneously. Billy was on his feet suddenly, kicking right and left at his sister’s shins, and the screams of the girls added to the general melee. It was from continual scenes just such as this that their older sister had fled, and now here she was in the thick of it again!

  Weak with fury at it all she stepped quickly to the door and was about to administer some of her old-time vengeful punishment, when suddenly it came to her that she was born again, and it gave her a strange feeling as if she had suddenly died and was no longer under the laws of this earth, as if her body was dead, and it was only her spirit that had come back here to her father’s house, and her young stepbrother and sisters. It gave her pause. What did a born-again one do now? Surely she was meant to do something about these little brats of children. Their mother ought to do it of course, but Erminie knew by experience that she would never lift her finger to the task if there was anyone else by to send after them. Their mother was probably at this minute deep in the mysteries of some murder or love story, a big box of sweets by her side and a cocktail near at hand. That was the woman her misguided father had married to look after her in her youth. How she loathed it all! Could anyone in his senses expect a newly born-again soul to go into a house like that and live herself, let alone trying to bring order out of confusion? Yet, if she was really born again, and was a child of God, as Link had assured her she would be if she accepted what Christ had done for her, then God likely expected her to do something about it. Maybe that was why He had made it so plain to her that there was only one thing she could do, and that was to go back home.

  She stood for an instant in the doorway looking at them until they became aware of an alien presence and suddenly ceased their rollings and tumblings and strikings and screamings and stared at her wide-eyed, as if she were a disembodied spirit in their midst.

  “Min’s here!” Blossom gasped, a new kind of horror in her voice. It was plain they had felt free from interference before they saw her.

  Their faces were smeared with chocolate from brow to chin and there was chocolate in their hair and on their dirty hands, to say nothing of the marks of chocolate down the front of their garments.

  She took a deep breath and then she went forward and grasped the little boy firmly by one writhing wriggling arm, which instantly became as slippery as an eel. Then she took one step and caught Blossom by her thin little shoulder firmly. “Come into the kitchen!” she said in a low determined voice. “Mariana, get me a wash rag, quick.”

  “I don’t know where thur is any wash rag,” said Mariana with a toss of her head. “Find yer own wash rag!” said the seven year old airily, her chin lifted defiantly.

  Erminie had her hands full for the moment, because Mariana’s reply served to build up the morale of the other two young rebels and they began to pull away from Ermine and then to kick her with all their young might.

  Her answer to that was to sweep Billy into the broom closet and snap the catch on the door. Then with Billy imprisoned and howling roundly, battering on the closet door with the dust pan and keeping up a terrible hullabaloo, Erminie addressed herself to Blossom. Still keeping a firm hold on the little girl’s arm she seized that doubtful looking roller towel, held it under the cold water spigot, and then suddenly surprised the howling Blossom by dashing it full in her face. As the howl subsided to a frantic sputter, and gurgle, and gasp, she firmly but gently rubbed the hot angry little face till all the chocolate smears disappeared, and finally wiped her face dry and set her up on a chair, quivering and subdued. Then she went to the broom closet to get her other victim.

  She opened the door quite unexpectedly to Billy, who was preparing for another onslaught on the door with the dustpan for a weapon. Billy fell forward into her arms, silenced for the moment, and thoroughly frightened.

  She gave him no time however, but applied cold water freely to his streaked face. He uttered one terrific scream, got a mouth full of cold water, and emerged choking and sputtering a moment later just as the stepmother opened the kitchen door, and stood there with displeasure written over her face, surveying the scene. Her look gradually changed from the fury of a lazy woman to cold disapproval over a hated stepdaughter that she thought she had got rid of for awhile.

  “Oh! So it’s you, is it? I wondered! What in the world are you doing here? Making trouble as usual, I see! What did you come back for?”

  Erminie shut close her lips on the accustomed angry retort and went on wiping the little red snorting face of the baby for almost a full minute. Then she said:

  “I thought perhaps this was the place I ought to be, and it certainly looked that way when I came in.”

  Mrs. Lazarelle flashed her eyes furiously.

  “Well, you can stop hurting the child now, and since you’re here you might as well go to work. That lazy girl I hired has left in a huff, and the house is a mess. Go change your fancy clothes and do something about it, won’t you? I’ve got one of my terrific headaches and I can’t be bothered!” and she turned and dragged herself up the stairs and back to her movie magazine and her depleted box of chocolates, where Mariana had been improving the time getting her share.

  Thus Ermine Lazarelle entered upon her new life as a child of God, without the faintest idea what to do next.

  Chapter 11

  Paul Redfern’s family came home a few weeks after the houseparty at Silverthorns, but by the time they arrived Paul had made himself very much at home in the Silverthorn house. He seemed to be very fond of McRae.

  Sometimes the Grant boys were there in the evening, but more and more Curlin had business that either kept him away from their festivities, or brought him late after a busy evening. And Steve was often absent also. McRae wondered about this, wondered if the girl Mysie was still alluring Steve. But she had no opportunity to ask Curlin about it. Paul was almost always on hand when Curlin came over for a few minutes, and she couldn’t of course speak about that girl before Paul. Still she was often troubled about the grave seriousness of Curlin’s face.

  And then one evening she decided to do something about it in spite of everything, so she followed Curlin to the door as he left, calling out, “Wait, Curlin, I want to ask you something!” and hurried out to the porch, where he stood with one foot down on the second step.

  “Curlin, listen, I hate to speak about it in
a hurry this way, but is Steve all right? Has that girl made any more trouble?”

  Curlin’s face had brightened when she called him, but when she spoke the gloom returned.

  “Oh, Steve!” he said, and drew a deep sigh, looking up at her keenly. “Why—yes, I believe he’s snapped out of that now. At least I think he has. He’s been pretty busy. He has a job in sight and that seems to steady him a little. I hope he’ll get wise to himself and be worth something after a while. It’s awfully kind of you to ask.”

  There was a formality about Curlin’s manner that puzzled McRae. They had been friends so many years that it seemed strange for him suddenly to get dignified with her.

  “Kind?” she said, with a worried little frown. “What do you mean, kind? That’s a strange word for you to use. Steve has always been one of us and I couldn’t bear to think he was getting into anything that was going to harm him.”

  “No, of course not,” said Curlin embarrassedly. “But I think you can rest assured he is okay! I’m keeping tab on him pretty closely, and I think he’s cut out that girl! But it think he misses you a lot, McRae. He said the other night he didn’t see much of this family any more. He’s always kind of idolized you, McRae, you know that. And he says you’re always busy when he gets home.”

  “Oh, but I’m never too busy for you folks!” said McRae with a dazzling smile. “You know Link and I would always rather be with you and Steve than anybody else?”