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 b
ore 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
The 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!
His car plunged on through the night, over ruts and humps without regard to its going, till he came at last to the high-arched gate with its single bright globe streaking across the dark of the road in a great gash of light above the dark winding drive that led by devious ways up to the inn.
Then caution suddenly seized him. He backed down into the shadow, parked his car as silently as possible, and proceeded on foot. As he trod the dry grass at the edge of the gravel making his footsteps as inaudible as possible, he began to think that it was going to be awkward to appear in that tavern and search for his daughter, HIS DAUGHTER! Supposing she was not there? He must let no one suspect that he even thought she was. He would have to be searching for someone else if he had to account at all for his appearance. He shrank inexpressibly from the ordeal. And yet it must be gone through with. If only he were sure whether she was really there; he could enter with more dignity. Perhaps there was a window unshuttered where he might look in and make sure, and possibly save being seen at all. It might be those high school children were entirely mistaken. Dudley Weston had perhaps taken some other girl to this abominable place, and his Betty might be even now at home asleep in her own bed. He must proceed slowly. It would not do to let even people who came to a place like this know that he feared Betty was here.
He dragged his heavy feet up the winding way till he came out on the level and was suddenly aware of a long line of cars parked in the dark edges of the drive. Somehow the sight of them brought a premonition. Was that—Could it be the Weston car? The last one in the line, parked boldly quite near the driveway?
Carefully, silently, he stole nearer, peering through the darkness. Yes, that was a Knowland, the same lines at least, and the taillight was out. So were the headlights. But he was sure about the car. He was used to seeing it go by his house every day. Perhaps he had better step up close to be positive. That would give him something to go on. Perhaps it would be well just to boldly go up to the door of the tavern and ask for Dudley Weston.
Thornton had taken the precaution to bring his flashlight from the car before he left it, and now as he stole toward this dark car his hand gripped it, ready for use when he should get close enough to see. One flash would make it plain. Besides, if he remembered rightly the Weston initials were on the door.
With the flashlight drawn and his finger on the switch, he crept close and raised the little lamp, but even as he did so he became aware of strong cigarette smoke and two red sparks glowing at him like two eyes from the
backseat of the car.
It was too late to retreat, for the fingers had obeyed the order his brain had given, and his big searchlight blared out full in the faces of the two occupants, discovering to Thornton’s horrified gaze his daughter Betty lolling in the embrace of Dudley Weston and puffing away at a cigarette.
The flashlight went dark, and there was an angry stir in the backseat of the car. Two glowing sparks of lights sped through the darkness like fireflies and were extinguished in the grass on the far side of the car. Then two angry young people issued forth and confronted him: Dudley Weston and his daughter Betty!
There was nothing about his daughter to show either that she had been lured into the present situation against her will or that she was a penitent sinner brought to overwhelming judgment. Wrapped in a fur-trimmed velvet evening cloak, which Thornton recognized as his wife’s, she stood out against the blaring background of Todd’s illumination almost regally, her slim body drawn to its tallest, her little sleek head held haughtily, like an angry princess. She surveyed him, and her voice was cold like showers of icicles as her words buried their sharp points in her father’s heart:
“Well, Chester, what do you seem to think you’re up to now? It strikes me somebody had better keep an eye on you. I’m about convinced that you’ve taken leave of your senses! What’s the little old idea anyway?”
Then, suddenly confronted by her unbroken morale, Chester Thornton could think of nothing to say in reply. He even flashed the light upon her again, with an aimless idea that he had made a mistake somehow and this was not his Betty, his little girl, talking that way to him, not ashamed at all of what she had been doing! She bore the scrutiny of the light and his searching, pitiful, gaze without flinching. Her eyes were cold and hard, and her lips were scornful.
He tried to speak, and no sounds came from his parched throat.
Betty stepped coolly out of the spotlight and laid her hand on her companion’s arm:
“Come on, Dud, let’s go back and have another dance,” she said nonchalantly. “If Dad thinks he can pull anything like this he’s got another think coming. Let’s go!”
The Prodigal Girl Page 4