To that end she had seated Thorny far down the table by her mother’s side. It was her own dinner. She had arranged all such details herself. But she felt as if the walls of a vast stone prison were slowly closing around her heart to crush her. As each day rushed on she felt more and more desperate.
Twice she had tried to talk to her father about it, but it always seemed as if some evil power were trying to prevent her.
The first time she broached the subject she got only as far as one sentence:
“Dad, do you think that people ever should marry when they are not sure they love each other?”
She asked it anxiously one evening when they were sitting on the porch alone for a few moments to watch the sunset.
He looked at her keenly, yearningly; but before he could answer a servant came up respectfully.
“Mr. Prentiss, you’re wanted on the telephone.”
And then before he was through telephoning, suddenly there were callers, just neighbors, who stayed and stayed, and there was no more opportunity to speak to him alone that night. Nor for two whole days following. There wasn’t a time when she could see her father alone without exciting her mother’s curiosity.
At last another brief time came, and she plunged into her trouble once more.
“Dad, is it ever right to marry unless you are sure you love the man?”
Again he looked up sharply.
“No, never!” he said almost fiercely. And then, still watching her keenly, “Do you mean that slick Thorny Bellingham?” he asked suddenly.
All at once there was a footstep in the hall and Mrs. Prentiss came to the door, pausing to look suspiciously at the two.
“What are you to having a secret conclave about?” she asked sharply. “Why do you always have to hide in corners to do your talking?”
Before either could answer, the doorbell interrupted and a telegram for Mr. Prentiss broke in upon their plans for the evening.
“I must leave for New York on the next train!” he announced, annoyed. “Something important in the business world has gone wrong, and I have to see a certain man tonight before he sails for a foreign land. I hope I’ll be back in the morning, but I can’t tell how things will turn out. It may take longer than I think, perhaps several days.”
There was no time to talk further. He was gone in a rush, and Patricia, almost sick with worry, wept alone that night and prayed. Oh, if her father would only come back in the morning! Why hadn’t she talked to him about it before?
But day after day came telegrams instead, that he was detained still longer.
And then finally he didn’t come until a few minutes before that awful dinner the very night of the party. It was grotesque! It was unbelievable, that he should be kept away so long! And she had prayed so much that God would help her, guide her, send her some definite word, and nothing had happened! Oh, she still believed in prayer, of course, but it must be some wrong attitude of her own somehow. But, oh, why didn’t God send her some help?
There wasn’t a minute to talk to her father after he came. She didn’t have even an instant alone with him. She had meant to tell him all about her perplexity and the foolish promise she had made to Thorny and her mother. But now it was too late. She had only time for a hasty kiss as her guests were arriving and a hurried whisper:
“I’m having a party tonight, Dad, and you’re the guest of honor. Hurry up and get ready!”
It was just then the telephone rang and she was called for. Her father was upstairs hastily dressing in evening garb, while she was receiving the apologies of the recreant pilot. And she was in such a tumult. If she only could have talked with her father for just five minutes and got his calm view of things, she might have been strong to face the evening. But there wasn’t an instant.
And then she suddenly took in what her pilot was saying, that he could not possibly get there, and her heart almost failed her. Here was even this brief respite from Thorny torn away from her!
Her brows were drawn with annoyance, her eyes were full of trouble. She hadn’t realized how much it was meaning to her to get away from Thorny for that last hour before she had to give her final word. It seemed as though there had been no time to think for the last two weeks. Her mother had been cheerfully going ahead preparing for this night, getting every last detail just as she wanted it, and there had been too much tumult in her heart for her to reason things out in the calm right way they should be reasoned. Even yet, though she had done her best to think of an engagement with Thorny, marriage with Thorny, as a foregone conclusion, she had not frankly told herself whether she would say yes or no when the moment came. Perhaps she was hoping that they would not press her at the last minute to keep her word, though she ought to have known them both better than that. Her mother’s cheerful determined mouth, Thorny’s possessive eyes, told her there was no hope from that quarter. And on the other hand if she should dare to assert her independence and say no, what catastrophe she would bring down upon the house. It would be too unpleasant to stay there after that. She shivered at the thought.
Oh, of course Dad would help her to get away from it all somehow if she made him understand what terrible pressure she was under, but that would be misery for Dad. She couldn’t do that! Oh, how silly it all was anyway. Why did she have to be married if she wasn’t ready?
But yet, suppose this was God’s plan for her life and she was trying to frustrate it? And suppose that by and by after it was too late to right things she would sometime understand that and have to suffer all the rest of her life for what she had passed by in her vague uncertainty? Would God let her do a thing like that? Oh, God, I’m Yours. Won’t You please hurry and help me to know what to do. Make me certain! Don’t let me go frightened into this! That was what her heart was crying out as she turned away from the telephone.
It was just then that the servant approached with John Worth’s card, and as she saw it her hope of a few moments’ reprieve sprang up again in spite of her.
And then, when she had read that card, suddenly the thought of John Worth seemed wonderfully steadying. A little talk with John, even if it were only for a few breathless moments, would be like a breath from a fresh mountain breeze to her fainting soul!
So, her face clearing, her eyes bright with sudden hope, she gave the orders to the servant and turned swiftly to go to John. He had promised to come, and now he was here! What would he be like after all these years?
She went through the library door to the porch and made her way by an outside entrance to the room where he was waiting. As she went, memories flocked around her, memories of things of the past that she thought had long been put aside. They came like dear old friends as if to rescue her from her trouble of the past few weeks. Silly, when of course they could not help her now, and she was only making more trouble for herself with this delay. But she had to see John!
Memories! Ah! A pleasant schoolroom and a lad with lights in his eyes! A voice that made her listen even when he was just reciting commonplaces! A rainbow and the breath of flowers, the smell of newly washed earth, and a walk in the twilight! A sweet dead face with lilies around it, her lips softly touching his brow!
She passed her hand over her eyes and drew a deep breath of mingled pain and exultation. He had come! Would he be the same?
She paused an instant with her hand on the latch before she opened the little door beside the chimney in the small reception room. “Oh, God,” she breathed, “help me!” Perhaps this had come to show her that it had all been a dream that meant nothing. Perhaps it had been this dream that had stayed in her mind and hindered her from accepting other things that might have been satisfying if her heart had not set up an ideal that perhaps was not as fine as she had thought. But no, that could not be! What crazy thoughts she was thinking! She must be coming down with something and was even now beginning to be a little delirious! How silly! She must get control of herself.
Then girding up her heart, she opened the door and went in. As she entered
she thought she caught the fragrance of valley-lilies on the air, and she wondered. Was it just her imagination?
Chapter 21
John Worth had been waiting there what seemed to him an age before he heard her footsteps coming along the tiles of the sun porch. Was she coming, or had she sent someone to say she could not see him?
He could not help but hear what was going on on the other side of that velvet curtain beside him, the throng in the other room clamoring away, and his heart had been going down, down, into a deep despair. This was not his world. Why had he come here? Why had he presumed to think he could ever fit into an atmosphere where this girl belonged, or that she would care to fit into his?
But oh, she didn’t seem, in his memory of her, to belong here. She had always seemed to be of finer clay than any of those who were shouting their bright nothings back and forth to one another.
Every moment others were arriving and swelling the gathering into a noisy clamor. What a fool he had been to come in when he found there were guests! But perhaps it was just as well that he should have come here to see for himself, for there would have been no other way to get that vision of her out of his heart. He wasn’t sure even that was going to do it. She had seemed such a true, such a wonderful girl, even when she was only a child.
But now surely his eyes were open wide! Would it not be better for him to slip away before she came and end this business, now while it was possible? Or must he stay and make some excuse? Say he had just dropped in to visit, and as she had guests he would go with just a greeting, and perhaps come again sometime?
No, it would be better just to silently disappear before the whole gang discovered him. That is, if there was a way to get out. He felt guilty of great folly.
He studied the door beside the fireplace. Did that open to a coat closet, or the sun porch? If so, could he get out the porch door before anyone discovered him?
“Where’s Pat?” cried Thorny raucously just outside the curtain. “I say, Barker, get me another cocktail, can’t you? That was only a sample.”
He rose impatient to be gone, and just then the door into the sun porch opened.
She dawned upon him at that instant and held him breathless. She was all in silver, slim dress and shoes and her dark hair was wrapped around her small head. He thought he had never seen anything so lovely.
“John!” she said softly, out of the shadows that were beginning to grope the corners of the room. “John!”
She came toward him shyly, all her worldly manner dropping from her like a cloak she had cast aside, and she stood shyly before him as if they had been again on the hillside together.
“Patricia!” He took both her hands in his and spoke her name reverently.
“Another cocktail, Barker, don’t you hear?” shouted Thorny just outside the curtain.
John Worth quivered at the sound as if his palace of dreams were shivering at atoms around him.
“John, you have come just in time for my dinner!” said Patricia, rousing to the present with a new lilt in her voice. “Come, I need you! Someone has failed at the last minute, and to think it should have been you that came to fill the place! Come, we are just about to sit down. Your place is beside me. We can talk at the table.” Her voice was happy and her lips were smiling, but her words were like a cold draught from another world. He drew back.
“No, Patricia, I would not think of intruding. I will only keep you from your guests a moment. I’ve come a long way to tell you something—”
“Won’t it keep till tonight after they have gone—? Or after dinner, perhaps, in the garden? You won’t mind staying a little late—?”
“My train leaves at midnight.”
“Well, then you will tell me at the table—”
John Worth took one step toward her and caught her hands gently but firmly in both his own.
“Listen!” he said, and there was something arresting in his voice that made her pause and look into his eyes. “It won’t take long to tell. It is just this. I’ve loved you all these years, and I’ve always meant to come back someday and tell you as soon as I was in a position to honorably do so. At last I have reached that place, but I am afraid I am too late. I’ve been called to take a position of great honor over in Europe and I sail tomorrow at noon. I must leave here at midnight to catch my ship. I’d have given you more time and myself a bigger chance if I had known sooner, but I came the first minute I got the word. This is all horribly abrupt I know, but when I found you had guests I could not bring myself to go away without at least telling you. There! I’ve been fool enough to lay bare my heart before you! Now, do you see why I cannot come out to dinner with you?”
Patricia, after just an instant’s pause, lifting her eyes filled with a lovely light, said, “No, I don’t, John. Please come out. I really mustn’t keep my guests waiting any longer.”
He gave her a puzzled look, wondering, his heart sinking.
“Do you want me under those conditions?” he asked, searchingly.
“I do.” Patricia’s voice sounded almost as if she were responding to a question in a ceremony, so solemnly she said it.
John stood hesitating, studying her. What did she mean? Was this just her way of sweetly putting him off?
Outside the curtain Thorny’s voice rose clamorously.
“Where’s Pat? Where has she gone?” he babbled, his hand pulling back the velvet curtain as he peered into the room where the two stood.
“Here I am,” said Pat in a steady voice, stepping out from the folds of the curtain, one hand lifted to push it back. Then turning her glance back to John Worth she said with a smile, “Come, John!” and slipped her other hand through his arm.
So they appeared suddenly in the doorway.
“See!” she called in a clear voice, her eyes starry. “I’ve a surprise for you all. A surprise guest. Thorny, you remember John Worth?”
Afterward she was glad she had not even remembered to notice whether John Worth wore evening clothes or not. He did. She noted with satisfaction later that his attire was faultless and that he wore his garments quite as if he were accustomed to such apparel. Indeed, as she caught a better glimpse of him in the lit room she thrilled to the face that he was even distinguished looking.
There was a moment’s tense silence after Patricia’s announcement. The guests were thinking back, trying to identify the newcomer.
There was utter astonishment, amid a dead silence, as if a bell had sounded, calling them all to attention. There seemed something almost electric in the air.
Perhaps the eyes of all would not have been quite so bewildered if it had not been for that whispered hint of a surprise in store. They looked and were puzzled.
There was nothing wrong with the distinguished man standing beside Patricia, watching them with grave, aloof eyes. Nothing wrong at all. He was even most interesting. But somehow he did not fit into the picture. He was not of their world. Was it that he was of a world above theirs? Why was his presence somehow like a dash of cold water when one wanted wine?
“Who is he?” whispered the coral one of the jade.
“Oh, some grind she’s picked up somewhere. Someone who has done something intellectual I’ll bet! Pat gets those complexes at times. I’ve often wondered if it isn’t just to get in the limelight some more. But what a bore tonight when we’re all set for something else. And what will Thorny say? Look at his face. Now he’ll get into one of his tantrums and drink a lot. I don’t see why he cares. There are plenty of girls just as good-looking as Pat, and just as rich!”
For Thorny had come about-face with battle in his eyes.
“Worth?” he said. “John Worth? Why—ah—yes, seems to me I do remember him. You worked at Miller’s farm, didn’t you? Looked after the cows or something, didn’t you, and barged into high school between times when you got done being nursemaid to the cows?”
There was a sneer on Thorny’s handsome lips and scorn in his angry eyes.
Everybody stared, but J
ohn Worth only grinned pleasantly, until Bramwell Brown called out:
“Yes, but remember the time John Worth rescued you and me from Miller’s old blind bull in the pasture!”
Then the whole fickle company burst into wild mirth. The laugh was on Thorny now.
Then Patricia was aware of her mother suspiciously watching the stranger from the length of the room. She had just entered and perhaps had not heard Thorny’s hateful fling, but there was iciness in her glance and haughtiness in her bearing. When Patricia introduced him she said coldly, “Oh, you are the pilot Patricia told us about, aren’t you?” and looked him over, a puzzled sharpness in her glance as if something about him perplexed her. Or was she just appraising him to see how much of a hindrance he might prove to her plans for her only child? “Did you fly down here?”
“Yes,” said John Worth easily, “I flew down, but I’m not the pilot. He couldn’t make it, and I came in his place.”
“Oh!” said Patricia’s mother and then gave him another piercing glance. This was someone altogether new, was it? Well, Patricia certainly was a difficult girl, and it would be a real relief when she was safely married to Thorny.
But Patricia’s father came to the front just then, stepping up with the first gleam of interest in his eye since he had come into the room.
“Why, it’s John Worth, isn’t it? I’m glad to see you again. Where have you been keeping yourself all these years? I haven’t seen you since you disappeared into thin air just as I had my eye on you for a job in my office as soon as you got through high school. I couldn’t get trace of you.”