The Prodigal Girl

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “I’m sure he will if you’ll let him,” beamed the father. “He has a sled that he thinks is rather fine, a ‘humdinger’ I think he calls it. Perhaps you’ll let him bring it up.”

  What a bore! thought Betty. Of course he’s just a country clod. But then, I’ll be gone, and it won’t matter!

  Chester was quite eager about it. He was saying that his children had been somewhat lonely since they came. Now how did Chester know that? They certainly didn’t want any native talent around. Still, the old man was kind of a good sport. The son might not be so bad. Only any young man in this age that would submit to having himself made into a minister was simply off the map so far as she was concerned. She let the conversation drift past her while she began to think about Dudley Weston and wonder why she hadn’t heard from him again. Surely Dud couldn’t back out now, after having asked her to marry him! No, Dud was game! H wouldn’t stand her up.

  When her thoughts came back to the room again the minister was talking about skiing, describing a great meet over at Brattleboro.

  “David has always been interested in it,” said David’s father. “When he was quite a little lad he got hold of a pair of skis, and he used to drive his mother almost insane jumping off mountains and disappearing and turning up on the top of another somewhere.”

  “Oh, can he do that?” said Betty suddenly, before she realized she was saying it. “I should think that would be a real thrill! I’d do anything in the world if I could learn.”

  “Well, it’s a thrill to watch it,” said the father, “and David is rather a wonder at it. I have no doubt he’ll teach you if you ask him,” smiled the minister. “He’s taught a great many.”

  “I shall certainly ask him,” said Betty eagerly and then remembered she wouldn’t be there when David came! What a shame. Perhaps she could get Dud to come back after a few days and visit, and they would try it together. That would be a great stunt! Dudley was always ready for anything new. That was one reason why she liked Dudley better than most of the other boys, because he never stopped at anything she proposed and then always went her one better in proposing something still more daring.

  When Betty came back to the conversation again from her thoughts, her father was proposing a most astounding thing. He had actually asked this apple-cheeked minister, this native of the backwoods, to open a school there at their house for them! Of course the man talked very well, and probably knew something about stuffy old theological books, but not anything modern. Ministers had to be pretty well educated or people wouldn’t call them to churches, but imagine an old fossil like that who didn’t know any of the up-to-date ideas, of course, trying to teach them anything! Why, even Doris would know more of what was going on in the world today than he would be likely to know.

  But Chester seemed to be in earnest. He was even getting it down to the number of hours a week. They were talking about how in Scotland the minister always used to be the teacher of any higher education. Chester was saying that he wanted his children to get back to the good old ways. He was actually talking about Latin and Greek! Greek! Imagine it! That would be a scream! What would Dud and the girls think if they heard of it, Betty Thornton studying Greek!

  Chester and the minister talked on, speaking of literature, how rotten the books of today were. What did an old fossil like that know about the books of today? He couldn’t possibly have heard of some of the Russian novels they had to read in lit class. He would probably be horribly shocked even to know what they were! Imagine!

  “I think perhaps I could spare the time,” the minister was saying. Great cats! Was Dad actually going to try to pull off a thing like that? Well, she was thankful she was out of it.

  “There is no book like the old Book,” the minister was saying. There was almost what one might describe as a glow of tenderness in his voice.

  “If people would really study the Bible more they would find in it a liberal education. They would find wonders in it that have never yet been revealed. But they are being discovered now. It is marvelous how the scriptures have been opened up in even the last ten years. Discoveries, history, the shaping of nations, archaeology, are all giving keys to that which has long been locked away from the knowledge of man, and it will not be long before the world is startled into knowing that the old despised Book has all the time contained the germs of all knowledge.”

  What a scream he was. The idea of talking about archaeology! When everyone knew that they were digging up bones of extinct animals that were living millions of years ago, just perfectly proving that the Bible was all off, and evolution was the only thing. But of course, a minister had to pretend to believe all those things or he wouldn’t be paid his salary.

  Thus irreverent youth kept up a running comment. But what was this that her father was saying? “I would like my children to study the Bible, too. Yes, that is the very thing! I would like them to know all there is to know about the

  Bible!”

  For Pete’s sake! Was Chester really going to try to put a thing like that over on the kids? Study the Bible! And with that old fossil! Wasn’t this the limit? Well, she would be off in a few days and give them something else to think about!

  But the minister was speaking to Betty, and Betty could not help liking his pleasant pink smile.

  “I shall have to tell David what wonderful chocolate cakes you make up here. I am sure he will be knocking at your door the very first day he gets home! He’s great for chocolate. His mother can hardly keep up with the demand while he’s home.”

  But Betty hardened her heart against the thought of a David who would let himself be wished into a minister, and she secretly hugged the thought that she would be gone when David arrived.

  Chapter 18

  The house took on a very different atmosphere now. Chris went around whistling everywhere and keeping up at least a show of work. The wood boxes overflowed with wood, and the fires were always replenished when he was about. Also he wore a more manly, respectful air toward his father and mother, as if somehow they had plucked him from some danger and he was grateful. If Betty had not been so occupied with her own affairs she would have wondered about it. As it was, he was a very pleasant brother to have around, developing a gallantry altogether new and an anxiety to please everyone that was most delightful. He had taken Betty into his confidence, and she spent one whole afternoon making lace curtains for the dollhouse out of a piece of old net she found in the attic, papering the different rooms, and gluing together the minute stairs that Chris had sawed out. It really was becoming tremendously interesting, this getting ready for a homemade Christmas.

  The still, clear cold came down as Chester had predicted it would, and the lake became a glassy sea, spreading like silver in the sun. Then the days were all too short for the wonderful skating, and they went down after supper once or twice, father and mother and all, and it was fun to watch the parents glide away together like two young people, Eleanor, after the first wild clutch and flounder getting her girlish poise and sailing off with fair rhythm.

  It was great fun, the whole family skating together! It seemed as if time had given them a reprieve and they were all children together. There were times, hours together, when Betty forgot her contempt of the country, and her plans to get out of it, and enjoyed everything wholeheartedly.

  Christmas would fall on Tuesday this year.

  It was the Thursday before Christmas that they went out to get the tree, Betty with the rest, and Eleanor along on the bobsled to help pick it out.

  The air was clear and keenly cold, but the dryness made it most exhilarating. The white-clad mountains with their fringe of evergreens looked like vast Christmas cards in the distance, and even Betty felt a new kind of Christmas excitement in the air. There had been days when she wept and mourned for her class plays and her dances and her giddy little friends, but she was fast becoming interested in the new vast world to which she had been transplanted. If it had not been for Dudley and what he would think of her, and th
e howl that would arise from those of her friends to whom he had undoubtedly by this time confided their plans, she would have been glad to forget him and enter heartily into the holiday.

  But a troubled mind is not a mind at rest, and Betty was ready at the slightest inconvenience to burst into contempt or fury and pour her scorn on her family.

  It was an afternoon to remember. The tramping over the crisp crust of the snow to find the particular tree that would just fit into the place in the big sitting room where Father remembered the tree always used to stand; the glitter on the snow as they stood around while Father and Chris took turns cutting down the tree; the resinous smell of the chips as they flew from the axe; the plumy sweep of the spruce boughs as the tree finally toppled and bowed its lovely tip slowly, almost with a sweep of pride to the ground. All those things were imprinted on Betty’s mind, and something like a plaintive song in her heart kept going over and over, You’re going away! You’re not going to be here to see this tree all decked out with paper ornaments and popcorn and cheap homemade stuff! and something hurt at the thought.

  “Sob stuff!” said Betty to herself, turning sharply on her heel and walking away from the rest, determined not to think about it. She had her life to live! They had no right to hold her here in this poisonous dump!

  Mother opened a basket of lunch she had brought along, and they all ate raisin gingerbread as they rigged the tree on the sled. Then all hands took hold to pull it home, everybody but Eleanor who walked smiling beside the tree and looked as young as any of them. Once Betty turned around and caught a glimpse of her mother’s face looking so pleased and full of delight, and it came to her suddenly as a new thought that Mums must have been a very pretty girl indeed! Would she look mature and serious all the time after she had been married for a while? Well, perhaps, but she doubted it. She didn’t intend to work as hard as Mums had done. She would lie in the lap of luxury.

  They carried the tree home with much shouting and laughter and made a ceremony of getting it set up. There was a great bundle of hemlock branches Chris had cut and lashed to the tree with a piece of rope, and Betty took pleasure in decorating the room with these, putting them over pictures and windows and on the mantel.

  Dan Woolley from the next farm brought in the mail just as they were sitting down to a belated supper. There was a letter for Betty.

  She hid it in her pocket and did not open it until she had a chance to run upstairs while the others were lingering at the table, excusing herself to go after her apron.

  It was from Dudley. She had recognized it, though he had evidently tried to disguise his handwriting. It was brief and to the point:

  Old girl,

  O. K. You’ve said it! Suits me! We’ll paint the town red! Sam and Gyp have renigged. Too much pull for Gwen’s shindig! But I know another kid in New York and he can get a girl easy enough. Don’t you be late. We might want to take in Gwen’s ourselves later. We better get tied in New York if you think that’s necessary. If you keep me waiting I’m off you for life.

  Dud

  It wasn’t exactly the kind of letter a bride would expect to receive from her lover two nights before she expected to be married, but it stirred Betty with a strange excitement. Perhaps there was beneath it all in her heart a trace of unrest and disappointment at the lack of something, call it romance if you like—Betty termed it “thrill”—something that the world for generations has taught its children to expect of love and courtship. But Betty reflected as she stuffed the precious letter into her pocket that this was a frank and progressive age, and she was a modern girl. There was no mushy stuff nowadays, everything was matter of fact. She had prided herself on attaining that attitude for the past two years, and this was no time to retract. She was going out into the world on her own, and she must be firm and carry the thing through gallantly.

  She came flying downstairs, with her eyes feverishly bright and her cheeks aglow, and offered to do the dishes all by herself. Chester looked up with a pleased smile.

  “It agrees with our Betty up here,” he said happily. “Look at her cheeks, Eleanor. She doesn’t need any rouge or lipstick now. That was the way nature meant to have the cheeks painted.”

  Betty caught her breath and hurried into the kitchen with a pile of plates. Something in her father’s tender glance made her suddenly vaguely afraid, a wild homesick throb of fear, or was it only that she was so excited? But she mustn’t let things get her this way. She had to carry this thing out right, and she mustn’t let Dud see she had wavered.

  They all insisted on helping with the dishes, however. They would not leave her alone a minute. And afterward they went into the sitting room and sat around the fire, with the lamp in the hall so that they sat only in the firelight with the soft glow over the crisp, resinous spines of the great, beautiful tree, the sweet piney smell mingling with the fragrance of wood smoke. Betty was stabbed with a sudden throb of the dearness of her family that she never had suspected before. She realized that she would never forget that moment.

  They sang Christmas carols for half an hour, and then suddenly Chester stood up and said:

  “I think we’ll have to thank our heavenly Father tonight!” His voice was almost wistful as he looked around in the firelight and smiled, and before Betty realized they were all kneeling again with the shadows playing over them while Chester brought them each to the Father’s notice in words that were matchless for tenderness and pleading. It seemed to Betty that she could not stand it. For there was God standing out there in the room again, looking at her, and there was her father telling God all about her in such tones as if he could see Him. See a God who was not! Poor old-fashioned Chester! And she was planning to steal out of the house tomorrow toward morning when they were all asleep and run away to be married! It was awful! If she had only known her father would do that strange, absurd thing again, she would have slipped off before they sang, said she was sleepy or something.

  She stole a quick glance around to see if there was a way open to the stairs, that even now she might disappear. She saw her father, with the glow of flickering light on his graying hair and over his tired face, her father in that humble attitude, and she shrank from it. If only she had not looked! For she knew again that this was something she would never forget, and she did not wish to remember it. It was something that paralyzed the spirit that was driving her on into life, something that disarmed her and made her weak and humble, something that would reach out clinging hands and try to keep her from going.

  The day had been full of eager plans and mysterious secrets. Mrs. Woolley had sent down a can of mincemeat. She said it was made after Mr. Thornton’s mother’s own recipe, and no mince pies could beat old Mrs. Thornton’s.

  Betty and Jane had made molasses taffy and had great fun pulling it and cutting it into neat shapes and arranging it on waxed paper. Mrs. Woolley sent down some cranberry jelly; and the turkey, a great twenty pounder, was from a nearby farm, also sent as a love gift in memory of the departed grandmother who had been a blessing to the whole neighborhood. The house had been full of good spicy smells, and laughter from morning to night, and Betty had worked harder than any of them, her conscience driving her most mercilessly.

  “For I won’t be here long to help,” she said to herself a hundred times.

  Why, Betty is waking up, the dear child! thought Eleanor, and Chester’s pleased smile was constantly upon her, making Betty almost writhe as she met it, for she kept hearing in contrast her father’s stern voice as it had sounded that night he took her away from Dudley Weston. And now another day would bring that hard look back to his face.

  But he will forgive me all right when it’s all over, promised her heart cheerfully whenever she faltered; and she had filled the hours so full that there was no more time to think.

  All this went over in Betty’s mind while her father prayed, and when she rose from her knees she hurried up to her room, not daring to stay around the fire and talk any longer. She had yet her little gi
fts to tie up. The quaint old china doll in its modern, up-to-date green silk was already reposing in a box for Doris. She was leaving her string of coral beads, which she had had on the day she left Briardale, for Jane. Jane loved them, and she could think of nothing else. She had bungled a necktie out of an old piece of silk for Johnny, hemstitched a handkerchief each for Eleanor, Chester, and Chris out of a piece of fine linen from the attic, and embroidered initials on them. It was all she knew to make.

  After they were all tied and labeled she looked at them unhappily and reflected that if Dud brought money enough along she would buy some really nice things for them in New York and send them up after she was gone.

  There remained yet a note to write. Young girl elopers always wrote notes to their angry parents. The only trouble was hers were not angry just now, and she had been having a really wonderful time for the last two or three days. Still, she had a duty to herself. She had her life to live.

  So she bolstered up her failing courage.

  There was a pleasant bustle in the air next morning when she awoke, and it seemed unreal that she was planning to go away. The very smells in the house made her tingle with excitement. Wood smoke stealing deliciously up through the cracks around the old stovepipe. Scent of pine tree, fragrant from its recent living in the great out-of-doors; odor of hemlock mingled with other faint suggestions of sage, onion, thyme, and sweet marjoram; pickles and cloves and spice. It wasn’t at all the time to leave home: Christmas! Christmas belonged to home and Mother and Father and the children. But of course, she was going out into the world now to make her own Christmas, and it was too late to draw back.

  Betty sprang up and dressed quickly. So much conscience as she still retained told her that at least she must do all she could for the common good this last day.

  She came down with a docile conscious air, but everybody was too busy and too eager to notice her much.