Patricia (17 page)

And Patricia, with a sudden heavy load of sorrow upon her heart, went softly in between the trees and the hedge and knelt down by the broad dark leaves of the valley-lilies, laying her hand upon one leaf as if it had been a child's head, and prayed softly, “Dear God, comfort John, and help him in this hard time.”

Then she went into the house and up to her room.

A long time she lay there in her bed before she went to sleep, thinking about the sweet mother who had gone home to heaven and had left her wonderful boy all alone. What would John do now?

The next morning she went down to the village quite early. She told her mother she had an errand she wanted to do before she went away. Her mother was busy with the dressmaker, who was altering a dress she had bought the day before, and didn't pay much attention, so Patricia slipped away without any trouble.

She went down to Mr. Mathison, her florist friend, and bought a big box of Madonna lilies and blue delphiniums the color of Mrs. Worth's eyes. Then she took the box herself and walked up the long dusty road to the place where she and John had climbed the fence. Would she know the way to the house again? Oh, she must find the way! If Daddy hadn't had to hurry away so early this morning to make the arrangements for them to leave on their trip that night she would have asked him to take her. Or would she? Somehow she felt she might be embarrassed to go with her father, and she hadn't any idea how to reach that cottage where they lived except across the meadows. So she plodded on, soft tears falling now and then, and great pity growing in her heart for John, who was alone now, with his own life to shape and his own way to make. What could she say to comfort him if he was there?

But he knew the place of comfort, better even than she did.

Perhaps he would not be there, and then she would just leave the flowers to speak for her. She had brought a card with her name written on it and just the words,
I am so sorry for you. She was dear, and I loved her.
But she had hidden it shyly in her pocket where she could get it if he wasn't there.

She found the fence where they had crossed that evening under the rainbow. She tried to climb and found it more difficult than when he was helping her, but at last she swung her feet over and clambered down into the soft grass. She had dropped the box over first. Then she picked herself up and took her box, starting toward the brow of the hill over which they had come from the house. The distant gray chimney against the sky guided her.

But she walked slowly, finding tears in her eyes continually. What was she going to find in the little gray house over the brow of the hill? Death was there, and she had never seen death. In all her sheltered life, death had not come her way. When it touched her family, or sometimes her acquaintances, her mother had always been there to decree that it wasn't necessary for her to go to funerals yet. Life was sad enough later on, and the young should keep away from the thought of death as long as possible.

So as she walked slowly over the uneven ground she was trying to prepare herself for the dreadful phenomenon of death.

It was very quiet as she at last reached the garden and walked up the path from which her own lily-bells had come. The house seemed still, as it would be, of course, when it had to entertain a guest like Death.

And yet the sun was shining and there was a quiet hominess about the place, the dear place that had seemed so sweet and charming that one afternoon that she had spent there. Her heart suddenly smote her that she had not come sooner. She had fully intended to come again, of course, but the winter had been so full, and she had felt shy about going, almost as if that other visit had all been a dream. But why hadn't she come right after commencement, after she heard that John's mother wasn't well? Oh, why hadn't she come then to see if there was anything she could do? How sweet it would have been to see her once more and get a little word from her to remember.

So she came to the door, the plain little cottage door. There was no crepe on it, no elaborate wreath of flowers. It did not need that sign to tell that the house mistress had gone Home. There were perhaps very few friends to come way out there. Nobody but John to see after the tender rites!

How her heart ached for John. Would the lamps in his eyes have gone out, quenched by his sorrow? For she seemed to know his sorrow would be very great, especially coming as it did a little less than a year after the death of his wonderful father!

And now she was standing before the door! She felt uncertain what to do. Did one knock? There was no doorbell.

While she hesitated, puzzling over what to do, the door opened, and there stood a rugged-faced woman with toil-worn hands. She knew at once that it must be Mrs. Miller, the farmer's wife at the farm where John worked. She had seen her once when she came to school to see about why her son Charlie didn't get promoted. Patricia was sure it was the same one.

The woman eyed her with a stolid glance, taking account of her dainty garments, wondering. Patricia felt suddenly confused. She lifted a pleasant, wistful look to the woman's gaze.

“I've brought some flowers,” she said gently. “Is—can I see—? Isn't John here?”

The woman gave her another searching glance and stood back.

“They're in the living room,” she said drearily. “You c'n go in ef you like.”

The girl hesitated. Should she venture to go in without being announced?

But the woman had no intention of announcing her. She wiped her hands on her apron and went back into the kitchen, turning as she closed the door to say, “Just go right on in!”

Patricia felt a great awe upon her, but she walked slowly over to the door and turned the knob, opening it just a crack and then a little wider.

The casket was in the middle of the room, almost where the table had been spread that night. Just a plain wooden box with a scant black drapery put around it by the undertaker. Beside it knelt the boy, his head down on his hands that rested on the edge of the casket. The fire was out on the hearth, and there was a desolate emptiness about everywhere. Patricia noticed that the pictures were gone. It gave her a sad, lonesome feeling as she drew near to the casket and stood looking down at the sweet face that lay there, so still and lovely, like an angel. Did death always do that to people, make them look like supernatural beings? She stood silently before the evidence of death and saw in it more than death. Life! A new kind of life, eternal life, which could never fade away.

Then as she continued to stand gazing at that sweet dear expression that she would always remember, after a moment John raised his head and looked at her. And suddenly the lamps in his eyes lit for her.

“You have come to her!” he said in a great wonder. “She will be so pleased—if she knows—and I think she does!”

“Oh, how I wish I had come before!” said Patricia, coming closer. “I loved her, and I thought about her a lot and how sweet she was to me. I always meant to come, but I wasn't quite sure whether—that is—if she would like me to.”

“She would,” said the boy earnestly. “She often spoke of you. She thought you were very lovely. She enjoyed that day you were here. She loved getting supper for you.”

“Oh, and how I loved being here and having her doing nice sweet things to help me. I shall never, never forget her.”

Patricia was weeping now, the tears splashing down her cheeks.

“How sweet she looks,” she said huskily, “just as if she were walking into heaven.”

“She did!” said the boy, and his voice choked. “She knew she was going. She said good-bye, and she said, ‘I'll tell feyther all aboot ye, laddie!' She was a wonderful mother!” The boy's face suddenly went down on the casket, and his shoulders quivered with his sorrow.

Patricia came over quite near to him and laid her hand upon his bowed head.

“Yes, she was!” she said softly.

The boy reached up his hand and laid it gently upon hers, pressing it lightly as if to show her that it comforted him.

They stood so for an instant, and suddenly he lifted his tear-wet face and smiled at her.

Then Patricia gravely stooped and laid a kiss softly on his forehead. It seemed a right and holy thing to do.

Suddenly into the silence there came the distant sound of the woman's footsteps. She was coming toward the room.

“I brought some flowers,” said Patricia quickly. “I thought perhaps we might put them around her, if you'd like to.”

The boy rose and stood beside her. When the woman opened the door they were taking the flowers out and laying them around the edge of the casket, big white lily branches, framing her sweet face, and blue flowers in between. The boy had taken a single lily and was folding it in her hands.

“How she loved them!” said her son as he gently turned the lily so it seemed to be looking up at her.

The woman watched them curiously for a moment, the lovely girl and the sorrowing boy working together. Then she said in a voice that seemed to have lost some of its harshness, “They've come! The car is at the door and the undertaker is in the other room.”

“Oh!” said the boy as if an agony were torn from him. Then with a great effort controlling himself, he turned to the girl and said, “I'm taking her down to our old home to lay her beside Father. Her old pastor is there, and he will have the service down there. She planned it that way for Father.”

“That is nice,” said Patricia softly.

She stepped to the side of the casket again and bent over to the sweet dead face among the flowers.

“Good-bye,” she said softly. “I'll see you again in our Father's house.”

Then she turned and went quietly out of the room. A man was standing there waiting, the undertaker, she supposed. John went with her to the door.

“I never can thank you enough for coming,” he said, “and for the flowers. And I'll be seeing you—sometime!”

Then the man claimed his attention, and Patricia went quickly down the hill and across the meadow. When she had climbed the fence she looked back and saw the funeral car start away from the door, out upon its long journey. And the next time she looked back she saw a large moving van leaving the house. What did that mean?

As she went on her way, the long walk in the sunshine toward home, she pondered on life and death and the wonder of the peace upon that sweet dead face.

When she got home her mother was in a great to-do about her.

“Why, Patricia, where in the world have you been? I can't understand your being so inconsiderate today when we have so much to do to get ready to go! Your father has telephoned that he thinks he can start about five, and I need your help.”

“I'm sorry, Mother.”

“But where in the world have you been?”

“I went to take some flowers to that dear lady who took care of me in that storm the day of the picnic.”

“Now, how silly, Patricia, when you could just as well have sent them to her from the florist's, or you could have taken them to her yourself when we get back. Having waited so long, a few weeks more wouldn't have mattered.”

“But she is dead, Mother! I wanted to say good-bye to her.”

“Patricia Prentiss! You haven't been alone to a house of death, have you? You didn't go in a bright dress like that to a funeral? You have no sense of the fitness of things at all.”

“But she wouldn't have minded, Mother, even if she could have seen, so what did it matter? And it wasn't a funeral, anyway. They were taking her away to her old home. I was in time. That was all I cared.”

“Well, if you're not the strangest child. I don't know where you get your peculiarities. You couldn't have dragged me to a house of death when I was your age. Now, hurry and get your suitcases packed. Daddy said he might come any minute if he got through what he is doing, so we've no time to waste.”

So Patricia packed her things, and then went back and repacked, putting in more things that her mother thought she might need. She went patiently through the day and got gravely into the car late that afternoon beside her father, silent for the most part, thinking of that brief lonely funeral train winding down the hillside and the boy with his heavy heart sitting beside the driver. The boy she had sent on his way with a tender little kiss of sympathy.

Tomorrow she would tell her father all about it. But not now. Mother wouldn't understand and would ask so many questions. But Daddy would understand. When he and she were all alone she would tell him.

That was a happy summer for Patricia.

The rare vacation in the company of her father filled her with delight, and the entire absence of Thorny from the scene did much to help her forget the unpleasant happenings of late, which had made his company so offensive. She had a joyous time and was more unhampered than she had ever been in her life, mainly because her father had plenty of time to be around watching and kept so in touch with her that there was no opportunity for her to be forced into social obligations that she did not like.

She played tennis and golf; she went swimming and canoeing and rowing and hiking; she climbed mountains and exulted in the great out-of-doors.

And when her mother would reproach her about not dancing with the other young folks in the evening in the hotel, her father would say, “Let her alone, Amelia! She knows what she wants to do. Why force her? She has been exercising all day and is healthy and happy. Let her get to bed early, if she wants to, and be ready for another happy wholesome day. Why insist on dancing?”

And Amelia would say petulantly, “Oh, George, you don't understand. Patricia will grow up without any poise or social training. She won't have any friends, and won't be invited anywhere, and will just be a social flop.”

“Let her flop, Amelia, if that's what she wants. She's having a good time. And as for friends, she appears to have plenty of them. I hear them calling for her all over the place.”

“Oh, George! How impossible you are! Haven't you noticed they are all girls, or else children? Not a young man among them. And Patricia is quite grown up. All of sixteen and going to college in the fall. She isn't a child anymore.”

“Then let her be a child as long as she can and will,” sighed her father. He wasn't relishing the thought of his girl going away to college. The house was going to be very empty without her.

“There'll be boys enough around before long, goodness knows, Amelia, and I'm not in a hurry to see them! At least not the kind you seem to admire. So let her alone!”

And the days went on happily enough, with plenty of time to rest and read her Bible, to dream a little over the past, and to catch her breath over an unknown future of college, which she wasn't at all sure she was going to enjoy. Not that she did not enjoy learning. It was the college life she wasn't sure of. Would she like it, or would there be a lot of girls like Gloria and Gwendolyn? The college was one her mother favored. She was going there because there was no point in just refusing to go where her mother wanted her to be merely on general principles; and she knew very little about any of the colleges. Of course, several of her classmates in high school were going to college, but they could not afford the high-class institution Mrs. Prentiss had chosen. Most of them were going to a small cheap college nearby where they could come home every night or at least for weekends.

So Patricia had acquiesced in her mother's decision and let her mother revel in selecting curtains, cushions, and adornments for her room. It was almost as if Amelia were going to college herself, the way she was planning things. Patricia smiled and looked on, though in her heart she was a bit troubled. It seemed to her as if she were leaving everything she loved behind.

Often at the hotel that summer when she went up early to her room while merriment was going on downstairs, she would sit and read her Bible for a little while. Then, turning out her lights, would drop down beside her low windowsill to gaze off to the eternal hills and think of some of the pleasant days that were past. Quite often a vision of John Worth came to stay with her a little while; she thought of the day in the rain, how he had sheltered her, wrapping her in his own coat, carrying her to safety; how he had hovered in the shadow the day of her commencement; how he looked kneeling there beside his mother's coffin; the kiss she had put on his forehead. They all seemed holy memories. And then that small funeral procession vanishing down the hillside. How she wished there had been a way for her to go along to that service, but of course there wasn't. Unless she had dared to tell her father. He would have done something. But she hadn't even asked where they were going. And Mother would have made a terrible fuss. Just to a funeral of an unknown person. Mother didn't approve of funerals. Not for her, anyway.

Then she would sigh and think of the brightness in that sunset after the storm. She thought the heavenly city would be like that in the distance when one was going Home.

These were not morbid thoughts. To her, going to heaven was something beautiful to anticipate. Something sure in her dim uncertain future, something that could never be a disappointment.

Then she would kneel and ask God to teach her, and softly, shyly, ask Him to be with John Worth when he had to come back to a lonely house. Would he stay there? She wondered that often. Would he have to keep house for himself? And go on working on Miller's farm always?

The next morning she would get up early with glad eyes and plunge into the delights of another glorious day in the woods, or on the stream, or flying about the tennis court.

One day her mother called her up on the porch to meet two young men who had just come in on the train that morning.

“Archie Dunwoody, and Harold MacCardy, darling,” she said, as if Patricia ought to be overwhelmed with just the mention of them. “They are the sons of two of my very best girl friends when I was in college the way you will be in a few days now, you know.” And she gave Patricia a warning smile. It was a smile so like the one she had worn the day she brought Thorny on the scene for the picnic that the daughter took warning and looked sharply from one to the other. Patricia wasn't particularly impressed with either young man. They seemed too sophisticated for her simple taste. But she obediently went with them down to the tennis court and played “a smashing good game for a girl,” as they condescendingly told her while they mopped their sleek foreheads and toiled up the slope to the hotel for lunch. But Patricia still did not care for them. They smoked too many cigarettes and said contemptuous things about the people she liked best. Then they informed her that they were going to show her a good time that evening in return for giving them such good tennis that morning; they were going to see that she had either the one or the other of them for a partner at every dance that evening.

Patricia turned unenthusiastic eyes on the two and observed them coolly. She was looking very pretty herself, with her hair in little careless rings around her forehead from the exercise and a fine natural color in her cheeks. She always had a cool look even on a hot day, and she smiled distantly.

“Thank you,” she said calmly. “I'm sure you're very kind. But I'm not especially fond of dancing, and I'll not be down this evening.”

“Oh, but you must come down,” said the one called Harold. “I'll guarantee to teach you to like dancing. I can show you all the newest steps, and we'll be the talk of the evening.”

“Oh,” laughed Patricia, “I've been to dancing school all my life, and I probably know as many steps as you do, but that doesn't make me like it. And I really shouldn't enjoy being the talk of the evening. I think you'll have to excuse me. But Dad and I are climbing the mountain tomorrow morning, starting at five. I think he would be glad to have you join us if you care to.”

“Climbing!” exclaimed the two in unison.

“Now don't be unkind!” said Harold. “Dance all night and then climb a mountain at daybreak! If that's your idea of a good time, it isn't mine.”

“Nor mine,” echoed Archie. “If I get down to breakfast by nine after dancing half the night, I'll be surprised.”

“Sorry,” Patricia said, smiling. “I hope you have a pleasant evening.” And she walked airily off toward the elevator. The two young men stared after her in astonishment.

“Well, now how do you make her out?” asked Harold. “Her mamma said she was just a little schoolgirl not yet in society. But she sounds like an old hand. Is she deep and experienced, just taking us out for a ride, or is she merely honest and blunt?”

“Search me,” said Archie. “I only know she's the best girl tennis player I ever met, and I don't care to have to play her again, not on vacation. I'm absolutely all in, and that isn't what I call a vacation.”

Wearily they dragged themselves to their rooms and rested awhile before they came down to the dining room. But Patricia washed her hands and face, smoothed her hair a bit, and hurried down with a good healthy appetite.

“Well, did you have a good time, dearest?” beamed her mother, already seated at the table with her husband. “How were the boys?”

“Not so hot, Mother. Dad can play all around them.”

“Patricia! What an expression! ‘Not so hot!' I am surprised. Will you ever get over the effects of that school?”

“Excuse me, Mother,” said the girl, smiling. “I didn't realize you would object to that. It is so expressive! But speaking more classically, the young men were not very good players. They didn't seem to care to exert themselves, and I had a terrible time holding myself back to be polite and not beat them too badly. Dad, we'll have to get in a set sometime this afternoon just to relieve the tension. Mother, were those boys' mothers like them?”

“What do you mean, Patricia?” asked her mother severely. “Are you trying to be unpleasant? What was the matter with those boys?”

“Oh no, I'm not trying to be unpleasant; but, Mother, they seemed sort of sissified to me.”

“There, George, you see. Patricia thinks that all boys who didn't go to the public school, and had the misfortune to be brought up gentlemen, are sissies.”

“Oh no I don't, Mother,” said the girl quickly with a warning look at her father. “We had a few sissies in the high school, too. I suppose they are everywhere. But you don't have to play tennis with many of them, thank fortune!”

“Now, Patricia, I do hope you'll be polite to my old friends' children.”

“Of course, Mother. But say, Mother, why don't you get Dad to drive you up to the mountain he and I climbed yesterday? It's gorgeous! You won't see anything as beautiful as that till you get to heaven, really, Mother.”

“Oh, for pity's sake, don't be so gruesome, darling. No, I don't want to climb mountains, even in an automobile. It gives me the creeps. By the way, Patricia, I wish you'd run into the little dress shop just off the lobby right after lunch. I want you to try on that little green dress they have there. It's a perfect confection, and I've had it laid aside for you. I thought it would be nice if you could wear it tonight, now that you'll have two really good partners to dance with.”

“Oh, but Mother, I don't need another dress, and I'm not going to dance tonight, or any of the nights here. I'm tired of dances, and I'm having a grand time. Daddy and I are taking a hike in the moonlight tonight, aren't we, Daddy? We're getting acquainted all over again. Why don't you try that with Dad, Mother? He's awfully nice. Just go out and do some of the things you used to do together when you first knew each other. I think that would be fun!”

Mrs. Prentiss looked up and met her husband's questioning eyes upon her.

“Would it, Amelia?” he asked searchingly.

She colored and dropped her eyes and then looked up again, embarrassed.

“Why—I guess so,” she answered hesitantly.

“All right, Amelia, just think it over; let me know the time and I'll be on hand!” he said.

Amelia sat back in astonishment and said nothing for one whole minute, while Patricia was slipping out and away to her room, and then she said, “All right, I'll think it over and let you know.”

Mr. Prentiss smiled a slow smile and sat thoughtfully waiting for his wife to finish her cheese and coffee.

But the two young men watched in vain for Patricia to appear in the ballroom. She was on a delightful hike with her father, up a long bright hill in the moonlight. It was then she told her father about the sweet lady lying among the lilies and the sad brief funeral train.

Patricia went home to an influx of shopping and fitting in preparation for her winter in college. It distressed her greatly. She had a feeling that her mother's idea of college was a place where she was to attend continual dances and dinners and card parties, and the “dear little morning dresses,” as her mother expressed it, were extremely elaborate sports clothes that the girl felt would be unsuitable to wear to attend daily classes. But she submitted to it all sweetly and then begged the privilege of getting a few little things for herself, just plain common things for rainy days and such, she said. Her mother consented to that and let her go unattended to pick them out. The other things were being carefully packed in the very latest model of wardrobe trunks and shipped ahead of her, so that when Patricia arrived everything would be there ready for all possible occasions.

So Patricia bought a few plain dresses and packed them herself in another wardrobe suitcase and felt far more comfortable than if she had only the elaborate outfit. She was being launched into a world of her mother's choosing, but at least she had enough sensible things along to make her feel at home.

Of course, this season of outfitting was a busy one and there was very little time to visit among her old friends, but Patricia got bits of news here and there. Jennie McGlynn was going to college, too, just a plain cheap college where she would work for her board and tuition, but she was radiant about it. Della Bright had been taking a summer business course and was going into somebody's office the first of September. Two of the boys had bought a little service station and gone into business. One had joined an archaeologist's expedition and was going to Egypt to dig up lost cities. Most of the rest were just hanging around forlornly trying to get jobs and looking sad and disappointed about it. But nowhere did she see or hear of John Worth, though she kept her eyes and ears alert for any news.