Treasured Brides Collection (19 page)

“Why, I believe she does,” said Mrs. Earle, looking at Effie with the friendliest smile. “I never thought of it before, but she really does.”

“Well, you ought to have seen her catch that horse! It was great!”

Effie’s cheeks burned with shyness and joy over the kindly words of Mrs. Earle, and she was so pleased and dazed with all their praise that she was quite subdued and sweet when they put her down at her own door. Mrs. Earle said she hoped she would suffer no ill effects from the adventure, and they whirled away.

Effie turned and walked into the house, as if she had suddenly stepped out of a dream into reality.

There was no one in sight. Well, then no one had seen her return. That was good. She need not tell anyone. She might keep this precious experience to herself and not have the life of it ridiculed out of her by the teasing of her family.

She went upstairs to her room, shut and locked the door, and went and stood in front of her mirror, looking into her own eyes with steady glance.

“Euphemia,” she said slowly, softly, to herself in the mirror. “You’ve got to be different after this. You’ve got to be of good report.” Then she turned and dropped upon her knees beside her bed and prayed, whispering the words in a voice of awe, “Dear Christ, please do that for me, too. Please show me how to be a witness. I want to have You help me.”

T
he famous picnic, which had been so carefully planned and eagerly anticipated, was not such a great success as had been expected.

In the first part, the guest of honor was not present, the guest for whom Maud Bradley had secretly planned it, though she had not let the girls know she knew he was coming at that time.

Maud had done her best at the last minute to get hold of him, in spite of his polite note of refusal. She even went herself to the Earle house, as early in the morning as she thought it discreet to appear there, but found to her dismay that both Lawrence and his mother were gone for the day. That, alone, was enough to spoil the party for Maud, for she had laid her plans so that she might hope to retain the young man for her own special escort. In fact there was not one girl in the bunch, with the possible exception of Flora Garner, who was not in some form or other cherishing some quiet plan to take possession of the guest of the day as her own private property. Even Eleanor Martin had decided to make much of Lawrence Earle’s former friendship for her older sister, Margaret, in order to claim his attention. It was a great thing for the whole crowd to have the young man back at home after his long absence, and the halo that surrounded his reputation made him the more desirable.

When, therefore, the company gathered, car by car, and the news was broken to each one that Lawrence Earle would not be with them that day, there was dire dismay. Several girls, against the advice of their mothers, had worn their best dresses, with the young stranger especially in mind. And these looked down at their crisp, new frocks in dismay, for there was no denying the wisdom of their mothers’ sage advice. The dresses would never be so fresh and pretty again after a day of frolicking, part of the time in the woods and part of the time crowed into automobiles. And now there would be no fresh frock for the next occasion, when the young man might be more gracious.

Janet Chipley even went so far as to try and get her carload to turn back to her home, on the pretext of having forgotten a box of mints, thinking to slip upstairs and make a change in her garments while they waited. But the driver of her car persuaded her otherwise, and the day began with a number of girls being much upset in temper.

This attitude on the part of the girls gradually had its effect on the boys of the party.

“Oh, Jan, give us a rest on Earle. We’re sick of his name. What’s he, anyway? He doesn’t belong to our crowd. Forget it. I’m glad he didn’t come. You girls wouldn’t have had eyes for anybody else. He’s nothing so great, anyway! Other men have made Phi Beta Kappa. Other men have been captains of teams and nines, and won honors. For Pete’s sake, forget him and pass the sandwiches!”

Then they had taken the wrong road, and turning back, failed to find the charming picnic spot they had started for, or the spring where they expected to drink.

There was salt in the ice cream, and someone had forgotten to bring sugar for the Thermos bottles of hot coffee. Jessie Heath tore her new dress on the fallen limb of a tree and blamed it all on Jimmy Woods, who happened to step on the other end of the limb when it caught her dress, and they had such a quarrel that they went on the rest of the way in separate cars.

Eleanor Martin was especially unhappy, for in spite of her best-laid plans, her car was loaded up with two of the girls whom she detested and the stupidest boys in the bunch. She would have protested, but by the time she reached the rendezvous, having had trouble with her makeup and been delayed longer than she realized, the others were all seated, ready to start, and there was nothing to do but take those left standing on the sidewalk waiting for her.

One of the boys who had fallen to her lot was determined to drive the car for her, and after resisting as long as she thought she could, she let him drive for a few miles. And during that episode they had two narrow escapes from a smash-up and one pretty nasty puncture in the new tire, which set them back several miles behind the rest of the party who went happily on their way, shouting out that they would unpack and have the lunch ready when they got there.

Moreover, Eleanor’s conscience troubled her, for she knew her father would be cross about that puncture, and she knew she had broken her word in letting Fred Romayne drive.

Redmond Riley had brought a strange boy from New York with him, and this young man had a dashing way with him and carried in his hip pocket a flask that he kept passing around. Eleanor was too well brought up to partake of its contents, but she had not courage to prevent its being passed among the others in her car. And presently the whole carload became most uproarious, finally demanding to stop at a place on the way, where Red said they could get the flask filled up.

Eleanor knew that her father would not approve of such doings, and she had a few ideas herself of what was the correct thing to do. Still, she lacked moral courage to insist, and the consequence was that she suffered tortures all day both from her conscience, which continued to annoy her, and also from the actions of the hilarious boys who were carrying things with a high hand. After the lunch eight of them jumped wildly into her car, which she had unfortunately left unlocked, and drove madly off through the woods, singing and shouting at the top of their lungs, their feet scoring the new leather of the seat, their driver dashing along the wood’s road without apparently noticing where he was steering, the brakes grinding in a loud scream just in time to save a collision with a large tree.

Eleanor ran after them, shouting, pleading, wringing her hands, but too late. They dashed on and were gone for an hour and a half, returning with the beautiful new car splashed with mud and one fender bent. The stranger from New York had been driving. He had filled his flask again somewhere and apparently had distributed it generously among the others, for they were all wilder than ever.

Eleanor had to lock the car and hide the key to prevent their going off again later. And in despair she climbed into the driver’s seat and refused to leave it, saying she must drive the car herself or they could not ride with her.

She tried to get rid of Red and his friend from New York, but none of the girls wanted them, and the remainder of the day became a nightmare to her.

Moreover, the moon, which they had counted upon for their return drive, withdrew behind a cloud, and rain began to fall to add to their discomforts.

They arrived home, long after midnight, in the midst of one of the most terrific thunderstorms the season had known. And those of the new dresses, which had escaped thorn and briar and crushing and wet moss and spilled cocoa, got a thorough drenching before their miserable young owners got safely into their respective homes.

Altogether Eleanor was not very happy when she met her father’s stern eye and tried to explain why they hadn’t come home at the time they had promised, and why the fender was bent, and the tire flat, and a long jagged scratch in the leather of the backseat. Tried also to explain the stain on the new carpet in the back and the strong smell of liquor that pervaded the whole dejected, mud-splashed outfit.

Altogether, Eleanor was anything but happy as she went to her room that night, and she was not in a much better mood when she came downstairs the next morning, so late that the breakfast table was cleared off and everything edible put away.

The Garner girls were not much happier, either. They telephoned Eleanor that their father was very angry about the behavior of the crowd. For it appeared that someone had passed them earlier in the evening and recognized them, and had brought back a report of their doings, which had spread through the town with various additions, and the Garner girls were in trouble. Their father considered them responsible to a certain extent. They intimated that he also considered that Eleanor had been responsible for the young men who were in her car. The whole thing was making a most unsavory stir, and the Garner girls were very unhappy.

Later there came word from Janet Chipley. Her mother was taking her away immediately. She did not wish her daughter’s name to be mixed up in the affair. It appeared that Red and his New York friend had called upon Janet that morning to return a silver spoon, which they had somehow carried away in one of their pockets, and had much offended Mrs. Chipley. Later advices from other members of the select junior crowd showed even more horrified parents, as the day wore on and the stories grew. For be it known that the crowd the Garner girls and Eleanor Martin belonged to had been considered beyond reproach, and now the young ladies sat in dust and ashes and indignity.

Euphemia Martin, as she resolved to try to have herself called hereafter, had spent a quiet evening in her room after her day’s experiences, searching her Bible for the verse that Lawrence Earle had quoted. With the help of an old concordance from the library, she found it at last and made sure that its words were thoroughly graven in her memory.

She went to sleep, saying them over to herself: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on those things!”

And she had never in her life thought on any of those things. It had never made the slightest difference to her whether anyone thought her true or honest or of good report or lovely or anything else. She had gone on her own selfish way, doing what she pleased and boasting to herself that she did not care what people thought of her, feeling proud of the fact that she was going against public opinion. And here it was in the Bible all the time that that was one of the things God wanted her to do—think about being lovely and true and having a good reputation.

Now that she thought about it, there was another verse she had learned when she was a child, something about avoiding even the appearance of evil.

Well, it was strange that she should have run across this young man in this way. The very person she would have avoided if she had known he was there. And to think he should have been the one to show her the way in the darkness. Just that morning she had been wishing she had someone she dared ask what to do about making herself right, and then he had been sent. He must have been sent, for it was all so strange and out of the ordinary, everything that had happened the whole day. It must be God had sent him to help her!

What a wonderful young man he was.

She went over the story he had told her of his own awakening. That must be what old-fashioned people used to call “conversion.” People didn’t talk about such things nowadays, at least Euphemia had not heard them, unless it might have been a minister now and then mentioning it in a sermon. But Euphemia had never been in the habit of listening much to sermons.

But Lawrence Earle was sincere. She could see that. He believed everything he said, and he carried conviction when he told about it. She felt sure he was right. She was comforted by the fact that God cared to guide her and that He had promised to help her. She longed to know more about this mysterious life of the Spirit that Lawrence Earle seemed to live in and understand. Could it be that a young, unloved, unlovely girl like herself could ever get that great hold on God that Lawrence Earle seemed to have?

And what a witness he was going to make for Christ. Why, he even cared to stop and witness to her, just a young, wild, awkward girl with nothing about her to catch his interest.

Oh, what a great thing it would be to go about a living witness of Christ! For that, one would not mind giving up anything else. But, of course, she never could. A girl who wasn’t considered good enough for the other girls of the neighborhood to associate with could never be fit for the indwelling of the great Christ, the divine Savior of the world.

But perhaps He could make her fit. Lawrence Earle had said He was able to keep anybody from all kinds of falling, and to present them faultless—wasn’t that the rest of that verse? They used it in benedictions. She knew it by heart because she had usually been so glad that the service was over that she followed the benediction to its end, ready to bounce out into the aisle the minute the amen had come. “Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy—” Did that mean that He was able to make one so faultless that it gave Him joy? He was not ashamed to present one whom He had made faultless, even before the presence of God’s glory? How wonderful!

Euphemia had never thought about holy things like this before. But she lay for a long time in her bed, in her dark room, going over these thoughts. And at last she slipped from her bed to her knees and spoke aloud in a very low tone, as if she felt the Presence to whom she was speaking standing close beside her.