The Prodigal Girl (21 page)

“Will arrive railroad station Springfield, Massachusetts, noon Saturday. Companion preferred.”

She solaced her conscience by saying that it would be easy enough to call it off later if she changed her mind, and so thinking went to sleep.

But she missed her calculation and overslept, and the morning was far on its way before she awoke. There was no alternative but to get her father to take her with him when he went down to the village next time, trusting to luck to get away and send her telegram.

As she went about her dressing, thinking this all out, she remembered with sudden dismay that she had no money to send that telegram, and how was she to get any? Of course she could send it collect, but that didn’t seem just right. Betty was a proud little thing. But at last that problem, too, was solved.

At the supper table the night before, the conversation had run on Christmas and the prospect of no gifts, each one of the children bewailing the fact that they had not bought nor brought anything that would do for that purpose. Their mother had looked up with a quick smile that nevertheless contained a swift warning look toward their father and said, quite as if it were a usual thing to do:

“We’ll have to
make
our Christmas presents this year. I was thinking about that last night. I believe it will be interesting. Just make some little thing, each of you for each of the rest, and we’ll give a prize for the most original gift.”

“But there’s nothing to make them out of,” mourned Jane.

“Oh, plenty!” said Eleanor, still smiling. “There is a wonderful attic full of beautiful things, and there’s all the outdoors also. When I was a girl I made a braided rug for my mother for Christmas once, out of old rags that were to be thrown away. She loved it, and I enjoyed the making, too.”

“What’s out of doors, I’d like to know?” asked Chris.

“Well, pinecones and acorns and acorn cups. We used to make picture frames out of those. And you have your camera. There are plenty of beautiful pictures that someday you can have enlarged. Once my father made me a dollhouse out of a packing box—”

“Oh–hh,” said Doris, looking from one to another of the family hopefully.

Betty remembered this now and turned it over in her mind. It gave her an idea, and one idea brought another. Later when they were washing dishes together she said:

“Mother, could you give me about a dollar or two? I want to get a new thimble. And my toothbrush keeps shedding bristles. I broke my comb, too, and I’d like some decent letter paper. I thought I’d ask

Dad to let me go along down to the village tomorrow if he goes. I hate to ask him for money, since you say he hasn’t any.”

“Why, I think I can manage that much,” said Eleanor, smiling. It seemed a reasonable request. But Betty went up to her room feeling like a liar and a thief. She had done far worse things than that at home sometimes, without being troubled, but somehow this seemed a more flagrant offense, because she was deliberately planning to bring trouble and sorrow to her mother and father. Yet she went straight on with her planning.

The next morning Betty went down to the village on a farmer’s sleigh, an old farm wagon with runners beneath and straw for upholstery. Chester went to the hotel to do some telephoning. He told Betty to float around and do her shopping. He pointed out the shopping district: a general merchandise store, dry goods and groceries combined; a drugstore combined with the post office; and the railroad station a little farther down the street.

Betty went to the last one first and got a timetable to make sure she could reach Springfield at the hour named. She also sent her telegram and discovered the price of a ticket to Springfield. How was she ever to get enough together even for so short a journey? She must hoard her money. Her mother had given her two dollars, and there was not much over a dollar left after sending the telegram. She must have some cigarettes, too!

The man in the drugstore gave her a sharp look when she asked for cigarettes, and she thought for a moment that he was going to refuse her. But she told him she was buying them for her brother, and he finally went and got them. She bought Chris some, too. It seemed only fair, since Chris would have done as much for her if he had the chance. Then she went back to the hotel and wrote a letter to Dudley Weston. It had necessarily to be brief lest her father appear before she finished, and she wanted to mail it if possible today. She wrote:

Old thing
,

You’ve said it! Parent stuff. Pinned all right. Broke, too. All kinds of a time getting wire off. Meet you in Springfield railroad station at noon, Saturday the 22nd. If school closes early Friday afternoon you ought to make it by then. If you write don’t put your name on outside of envelope. Forbidden stuff! Hard going! If you want to send anything, make it chocolates with a layer of smokes inside. This is a perfectly poisonous place. Empty as a flask! Be sure to bring Gyp and Sam, or else get Fran and somebody. And let’s make it companionate. That sounds newer. Don’t be late
.

Thorny

Chapter 16

B
etty slipped out and mailed her letter and then came back and sat down in the funny old stuffy parlor and waited. She stared out of the window at the little empty street with its mountains of snow on either side and its far vista of frozen lake at the end. The lake was surrounded by a huddle of closed summer cottages and boathouses shivering on the bank like worn old ladies in white fur capes and hoods. She was thinking that she had done it now. The word had gone out of her hand that she would marry Dudley Weston. She could not call it back! It was under the United States stamp and seal! It had to go with its message. If she wanted to retract she would have to go back on her word, and there was an unwritten law that one who did that had a streak of “yellow.” Betty had never showed a streak of yellow. She was known all over school as a “game kid.” She would have to carry it through now, no matter what.

Her cheeks glowed and her eyes shone. It was going to be a lot of fun, anyway, something to break the horrible monotony of this snowbound dump to which they had brought her.

When her father came back to her she was looking almost happy, and her cheeks glowed so brightly that he gave a relieved sigh. Betty was standing the exile better than he had dared to hope. Perhaps if they stayed long enough she would forget all about the dreadful things she had left behind her and become again the pure, sweet child she had been. If only it might prove that he had not discovered things too late! He had just arranged to have a telephone put into the old house, which would make it possible for him to stay all winter, with only a trip to the office now and then.

“Well, Betty, did you get everything that you wanted?” he asked pleasantly.

Betty looked up then answered evasively:

“Well, no, not everything. Some things cost more than I thought. I didn’t have enough money.”

“Not enough money?” he said, smiling, and dropped a five-dollar bill in her lap. “Run along and get what you want. I want to write a letter, and then we’ll be ready to go when Mr. Brown comes back.”

Betty took the money, her cheeks growing very red, and went slowly over to the store. She would have to get something or her mother would ask about it. She felt as if she were taking her father’s lifeblood in that five-dollar bill. She almost ran back to give it to him and tell him she didn’t need the things, that he had better keep it for necessities, that she knew he couldn’t afford it. Then she reflected that it would go far toward making her journey to Springfield possible; and after all, when she was gone, there would be one less in the family to support.

She bought a twenty-five-cent toothbrush, a ten-cent thimble, a thirty-cent box of letter paper, and came slowly, almost shamefully, back to her father, feeling that she ought to give the change back, yet knowing she did not mean to do so unless he asked her.

Chester did not ask for the money. Betty got into the old sleigh and settled down in the straw, telling her conscience that she wasn’t doing anything criminal. The money would be there in her pocket if either her father or mother asked for it back again. She wasn’t stealing it. They had given it to her. She reflected, as she drove back to the merry jingle of the sleigh bells, that she had done very well to get things so far under way for her going, and she could afford to be nice and pleasant the rest of the time she had to stay. Of course they were going to be terribly upset with her for a while, and perhaps it was a rather rotten thing for her to do. Yet after all, it was rotten of them to bring her away from her friends and park her up in a mountain to die! They had no right! It was her own life, and she had to live it. She was preparing to live it to the limit, and the thought made her fairly sparkle with goodwill toward her family.

As a sort of atonement she entered at once into plans for Christmas as soon as she got back to the farm. She instituted an expedition to the attic immediately after lunch in search of materials and professed to have great ideas for what she was going to do. But she said nothing at all about the other ideas she had developed while hunting through the old trunks and bandboxes and chests. She came down with her arms full of old velvets and satins and silks, but she did not tell about the rose-colored taffeta she had found in the depths of the biggest trunk. It had been a part of Great-Aunt Elizabeth Thornton’s ancient trousseau. She brought it down wrapped in an old hand-embroidered nightgown of firm, fine linen embroidered in delicate vines and flowers. The taffeta was made with a silk fitted waist and a long, full skirt, very much like the present-day fashion of evening dresses. It had a low, round neck and a bertha collar of priceless old lace. Why, wouldn’t it do to take along for a dance frock? She had nothing whatever fit to appear in before her own world except the little jersey dress she had worn away from school that day. She scorned all the sensible garments her mother had brought along. Of course when she got home, after the marriage and a suitable interval for some kind of a honeymoon, depending on how much money Dud could rake up, she would be able to get into the house and perhaps find some of her own clothes. Surely everything must be there just as when they left it. The house couldn’t have been sold with all their clothes in it, not so soon anyway. Of course Mother and Dad had had a lot of conferences behind closed doors and hadn’t breathed a word. There was no telling what had been done. Mother looked awfully sad sometimes when she came out, and once Betty had caught her crying. It was hard on Mums, of course. After she was married and living in luxury she would invite Mums a great deal to visit her. Of course she would be living in luxury, for Dud’s father was said to be fabulously rich, and he had been awfully generous with Dud. When he found he was really married and settled down he would of course likely build him a house and furnish it. Too bad Dad couldn’t get her a decent trousseau, but going off this way would really let him off. Nobody could expect him to do anything when he hadn’t been told, and of course he would be angry for a while. That would be natural, and people wouldn’t expect anything of him till he got over it. Then by that time he would likely have pulled up in his business, and of course Dad would come across handsomely with chests of silver and things as fast as he got into shape. He had always been generous.

So reasoned Betty as she locked her door against intrusion, turned her back on Great-Aunt Elizabeth’s limp china doll that she had brought down to dress for Doris for Christmas, and arrayed herself in the rose-colored taffeta. It certainly was attractive, with its fall of rich old lace about the shoulders, almost down to the slim little waist. The skirt was put onto the waist with a cord and hung about her deliciously. If she could only manage to curve up the hemline in front a little, it would make it more chic, but on second thought that might be dangerous, with no long mirror by which to get the effect and no one to help her pin it up. Besides, there were many dresses made nowadays with straight hems, and it would be charming to say it was being worn just as her great-aunt had worn it on her wedding trip! All it really needed was ironing, and she could easily manage to bring up an iron and an ironing board or something and smooth out the wrinkles. This business of making Christmas gifts for each other was going to make it quite possible for her to do a lot of things in privacy without exciting suspicion, because they were all working behind closed doors.

She whirled about to let the rich, rosy waves of silk swish around her and the lace collar foam around her shoulders. She spread out her young white arms before the old mirror where perhaps her aunt had once stood in that same dress. She put her head to one side and sighed happily. It looked as if a real thrill was on the way.

Then she suddenly shivered. It wasn’t as warm up in that old Vermont farmhouse bedroom, heated only by a drum from the sitting room below, as it was in her steam-heated bedroom at home in Briardale. Primping and admiring herself might be at the expense of a cold, and she mustn’t run that risk now or she might not be able to get away with her plan.

So she slipped out of the rosy silk and folded it safely away in its shrouding of embroidered linen in her bottom drawer, locked the drawer, and put the key in her sweater pocket. Then she put on her warm farm garments again and stole downstairs to read by the fire. She had found an old book that was thrilling and wanted to finish it. It told of lords and ladies and quaint old times of persecution when knights fought for ladies fair, and love was supreme. The essence of the story somehow mimicked what Betty was planning to do. She began to idealize the noble Dudley as her rescuer.

Yet she had a very tender feeling toward her mother and the rest of the family. She even laid down her book and went to the kitchen door to ask if she could help her mother when she heard her sigh as she shut the oven door on a couple of big apple pies she had just made.