Patricia

  It was Della Bright who told her at last about him. She came shyly in to tell Patricia that she was going to be married a little after Christmas. She was marrying the boy that used to bring the groceries from one of the chain stores. He was being promoted at Christmas to be manager of the store. He was four years older than Della and quite dependable. Della’s face was radiant. She seemed to have forgotten the glamour of the day when she had all of Thorny Bellingham’s attention and reveled in it. She was evidently very happy indeed. She had picked out her little new bungalow where she was going to live and was making curtains and getting her “hope chest” well plenished. She actually looked down on Patricia as if she was a poor little rich girl who had to go away for four years to college and play at lessons again, while she, Della, was going to be grown-up at once and begin housekeeping. She told Patricia grandly that she was to have an electric refrigerator and a piano. Jim was buying them on the installment plan.

  Patricia looked around on the elegant furnishings of her mansion-home and realized for the first time in her life that there were people who had to get things like these one at a time, and work hard and sometimes suffer a little to get them, but they enjoyed them a great deal more than she had ever enjoyed or even thought of all the accessories of her luxurious life.

  It was just as she was going out the door that Della told about John Worth, that he had gone away somewhere. Patricia caught her breath and listened to every word that Della said.

  “But, isn’t he coming back any more?”

  “I don’t know,” said Della disinterestedly. “I ’spose not. He doesn’t work at Miller’s farm anymore, of course. They’ve got a new man there.”

  “Oh!” said Patricia, thinking of the dear little house on the top of the hill, with the glowing fireplace and the valley-lilies by the door. “But what have they done with his house where he lived?”

  Della laughed.

  “Oh, I ’spose that’s there yet. He couldn’t take that with him. I ’spose the new man lives in it. He comes from over near Morgantown. He has seven children. The oldest girl is in high school. There’ll be a lot of changes in school this year, won’t there?”

  Patricia said yes, there would, and swallowed hard and tried to look cheerful when Della tripped away to her happy cheap little future. But after she was quite gone and had turned out of the street into the next block, Patricia went slowly down the steps and walked down the old path between the hedge and the tall hemlock trees where her lilies grew. She stood there and communed with those broad green leaves awhile and remembered how a boy with lights behind his eyes had planted them and had said that he would come back someday and see her. Would he remember that through the years, now that he was growing up?

  The next day Patricia went away to college.

  Chapter 18

  Patricia went in a daze through the first year of her college life. It was all so utterly different from her former life. Here her days were marked out for her in a way, and there were certain things she was supposed to do at each hour, but she was on her own and not under the dictates of her mother concerning the little matters of life, like dress and companions. She might choose her own ways, and she did to a large extent, but she found herself harking back constantly to the influences of her past, and sometimes she found them conflicting so hopelessly that she was all at sea to know which way to turn. So one day she took her Bible on her lap and sat down by herself, when she knew there would be no interruptions, to face the situation and see just what she should do.

  In the first place, as she thought it out, it seemed there were people and principles to which she had always deferred; one of the strongest things ingrained in her being when she was little was that she must do as her mother told her to do. For a long time she had felt that Mother must be pleased no matter what anybody else thought, and this habit had a strong power over her yet. It was right, too; one’s mother should be deferred to and pleased, of course. The Bible made that plain. She turned over the leaves until she found the old law: “Honour thy father and mother.” She sat studying it for a time and then bowed her head and asked that she might be guided in this study of her duty and the plan of life she ought to follow.

  As she thought about it, she realized that she had usually done what her mother wanted because her mother would have made such a disturbance for everybody if things did not go the way she wished; was that altogether a right reason for obedience? It wasn’t usually loving obedience either. There had been a great deal of heart rebellion with it all. Was that altogether her fault? Wasn’t it perhaps that Mother didn’t always see things in their right light? There, for instance, were the times when it made Father unhappy!

  Then it came to her that she had always obeyed her father because she loved to do so. It pleased her to please him. Could it possibly be that he wasn’t always altogether right in every case, either? What then should be the criterion?

  She turned the pages of her Bible again and searched in her concordance under the word obey. Ah, here was a verse! As so often when she was searching for guidance in this book, it was just as John Worth had told her it would be when she came to it with a will to believe and a desire to be guided; it seemed just as if the words were written straight to herself. They stared out at her from the pages: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.” Ah, there was her answer. There was One Other, higher than either of her parents, the Lord! And suddenly she recognized that that was true. She had accepted the Lord as Head over all, and whatever she did had to be first pleasing to Him. Beyond that she would have to trust to Him to help her make the other pleasings fit.

  She put away her Bible at last and knelt to pray, to tell her Lord that He was to be her Head and show her just which way to turn as day after day opened up a new way.

  As she finally rose and sat down to think again, it came to her that there was one other who had influenced her a great deal, more perhaps than she had realized, and that was John Worth and his wonderful father and mother who had made her see her Lord and want to follow Him.

  After that it was easier to settle questions. She just took them all to her Lord in prayer, and somehow each was worked out. So day by day the problems were presented and settled, and she went on taking her place in that college life, making her own firm young mark on those around her, letting them see that she had her own pattern to follow and there were certain things she would do and certain things she would not. There were no compromises with her, except in those things that did not really matter and only affected her own pleasure. In those she was always ready to give up.

  With a standard of life like that, it was not surprising that soon her companions and fellow students came to recognize in her the likeness of the One who was her Guide.

  So much so a student approached her one evening, coming to her room to talk a few minutes.

  “You’re one of those they call Christians, aren’t you?” she said with something like a sneer.

  Patricia looked at her in surprise. “Why, yes, I’m a Christian.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I never stopped to think,” said Patricia. “But I guess it was because I needed Christ, and when I found He had loved me and died in my place for my sins, I just accepted Him, and it’s been good.” There was a look in Patricia’s face that the other was amazed at. She had never seen that look in anyone’s face before. She looked at this new girl in a puzzled way.

  “You believe the Bible, then, don’t you, Pat?”

  Patricia had been called Pat in college almost from the start.

  “Oh yes, I believe the Bible,” she said brightly.

  “I wonder how you can,” mused the other. “They say it’s full of contradictions! And don’t you find it very hard to understand?”

  “But, you see, you have to have the key before you begin to understand,” said Patricia. “There’s no trouble when you unlock it with the key of willingness to believe what it says. I was told when I began reading it that I must accept it
with a willingness to believe it and let it prove itself. That was the way I took it from the start, and it has always been made plain to me so far. Of course, I don’t pretend to be very wise or great, but I have been satisfied that it fits my need. It is only the people who have decided not to accept it who can’t understand it. They aren’t willing to take it; therefore, God has let them have a strong delusion that they should believe a lie. That’s what it says. And in another place it says, ‘If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.’ I guess the people who are really anxious to find the truth won’t have any trouble.”

  “But you can’t make yourself believe something you don’t, can you?”

  “Well, you can trust a thing till you try it, the way you trust people and things and prove them. And besides, I think believing is something you decide to do, not something you understand all about and are sure of beforehand. It has to be tried to be proved. But—I’ve tried it, a little that is, and it proves! It really does.”

  They talked a little longer, and the other girl went away at last with a wistful good night.

  “I’ll come and talk to you again if you don’t mind,” she said. “I like the way you talk. It sounds sensible. And I’ve got a rotten deal ahead of me when I get through college. I’ll need something to help me through, even if it turns out to be just religion!”

  After she was gone Patricia got down on her knees and began to talk to God about that other girl. It was the first time the thought of praying for another’s salvation had come to her, and now she wanted with all her heart to have this Rose Sheffield find her Lord and know the sweetness of fellowship with Him as she did.

  How she wished she were wise in the Bible. If only she had known the Worths for a little while longer before they went to heaven, and could have gone to their home often and asked them questions and listened to their wonderful way of explaining the Bible! Oh, she knew so little! Just what she dug out for herself.

  After she was in her bed for the night with her head resting softly on her pillow, it came to her to wonder where John Worth was. If she only knew where he had gone she would write to him and ask him where she could get some books that would answer some of the questions Rose Sheffield had asked. Maybe John Worth would come back next summer while she was home and she would get a chance to talk to him sometime. She would ask him a great many questions. Of course, it might be that the young minister who had recently come to the little church where she and her father went could give her help, but she didn’t know him very well, and she wasn’t sure he would talk as the Worths had talked. She would just ask God to lead her, and then perhaps He would send some message to her from someone who understood as John had done. She would trust God and wait.

  But after that night she began to pray for some of her classmates. And there were plenty whom she saw were under that strong delusion that they should believe a lie. She didn’t know how to do anything for them but pray, but she presently found her ministry in prayer, and things began to happen quietly. Someone came to the college and gathered half a dozen among the students who were Christians and got them started praying for others, praying that a witness for Christ might be established in that institution. And before the year was over there was a little group that gathered quietly without any stir or notice, in one another’s rooms, to pray for themselves and for each other. And the witness that went out in various directions in that non-Christian institution all started from quiet Patricia Prentiss and her sweet unobtrusive witness.

  So when Patricia went home for the summer vacation she found herself refreshed in spirit. But she was longing for more teaching now. She had not found much in the environment of the college. The churches were mostly cold and formal like the one her mother attended spasmodically, and she was glad to get back to the old-fashioned church and Sunday school where she had grown up. She found, too, that the new minster was preaching answers to some of the questions that had often troubled her, and her heart rejoiced to have them voiced and explained.

  Mr. Prentiss had found that his daughter had a longing to learn to ride horseback, so when she had been home a few days he brought her a horse.

  “Now, Mr. Prentiss,” said Amelia, “you know that was a very foolish thing for you to buy. You might much better have rented a horse if Patricia has to ride. She will go back to college after a couple of months, and what will she do with a horse, at college? She can’t take it with her, of course, and if she could, I would just worry every living minute lest she had been thrown off and killed.”

  But the horse was bought and remained, stabled in the old barn far behind the Prentiss mansion and cared for by a groom who knew how to care for horses and who knew and loved that particular horse. The light of delight in Patricia’s face had settled the question for her father. If his daughter wanted a horse, a horse she should have.

  “Why, if the horse doesn’t care to attend college,” said George Prentiss whimsically, “she can stay at home here and play around with Peter till Patricia gets back.”

  “But it would have been so much better for you to have got her a car,” mourned Amelia. “All young girls have cars nowadays, and she could have taken me around a lot on my errands.”

  “You have a car of your own, Amelia,” said George Prentiss, “and a man to drive it. If Patricia wants a car, too, she shall have it, but we’re going to keep the horse.”

  So the horse stayed.

  It did not take Patricia long to learn to ride, and she was soon off around the countryside, with Peter well out of her sight but keeping a careful vigil riding an old cob of his own.

  So the summer passed quietly and most happily for the girl who was enjoying her home more than she had ever enjoyed it before.

  Her mother, of course, made a great attempt to bring her into the social eye, inviting a few of her old dancing class informally to tea or dinner or trying to organize various festivities, but constantly Patricia begged her not to do so, saying she wanted time to rest and get acquainted with her family again. Nevertheless, Gloria and Gwendolyn and a number of the other girls whom Mrs. Prentiss favored were often running in and planning this or that, and Patricia found it very hard to escape all their invitations. Often her father was inveigled into borrowing Peter’s horse in the evenings and taking a ride with her so that she might escape something she did not want to attend. Still, there was one thing that she was fervently thankful for, and that was that Thorny was not at home and there was no reference to him in any of their conversations. Always she took good care herself not to mention him. From a few casual words she happened to overhear now and then among the friends of her childhood, she gathered that Thorny was abroad, having passed brief careers in two or three minor colleges; but nobody seemed to know just where he was now or what he was aiming to be. His absence removed an old source of much argument, however, and when it came time for her to return to her own studies, she told herself hopefully that she and her mother seemed to have come a little nearer to one another; there had not been as much discord between them as when she was a child. She told herself that probably a good deal of the trouble in the past had been her fault. Or perhaps, now that she took her troubles to the Lord in prayer He was helping her to bear little annoyances more patiently.

  So passed another year, with only the brief homecomings at Christmas and Easter, and by the time she came back for the second summer at home Thorny had almost faded out of the picture, for no one seemed to know much about him.

  One thing that distressed her, however, was that though it was now two years since she had seen John Worth drive away on that sad funeral train, there was no word of him from anyone. No one knew anything about him, and no one seemed to care. And of course a girl who hadn’t been supposed to have any contact with him whatever couldn’t go around asking questions about him.

  Only down in the sheltered little path between the hemlocks and the hedge, where somehow his presence seemed to linger, she could go sometimes at night and stop and touch the faithful
green leaves he had planted. Looking up to the stars, she would pray for her Lord to bless him and keep him safely.

  And then one day Thorny came riding into her life again.

  Patricia was sitting in the hammock on the side porch reading when he came cantering showily up the drive on his lovely bay horse. Stopping under the porte-cochere, he flung himself off with skillful grace, looking his handsomest in expensive riding togs.

  Patricia looked up from her book when she heard the horse coming, and for the first minute she didn’t know him at all, he seemed so grown up and mature, so altogether a finished man of the world, though with a jaded look about his eyes, as if he had gone far and seen much.

  She had risen quickly and was studying him as he caught sight of her before he was quite up the steps. Then his face beamed into recognition.

  “Oh, hello, Patty, old friend!” he exclaimed graciously and sprang up the remaining steps to greet her. “Say! You certainly have changed a lot, Pat, haven’t you? I had no idea you would ever be as beautiful as you are. Why, you’re rare! You’re marvelous! Say! You take my breath away!” And he suddenly came nearer and took both her hands in a close grasp, looking down at her in sudden admiration, as if unexpectedly he had come upon a jewel of great price. Dramatically, with his characteristic quick reaching out for whatever pleased him, he took possession of her as if it were his right.

  “Why, Patty, you are precious!”

  Patricia, at his voice, quickly recovered from her astonishment and, smiling, drew her hands away from his insistent grasp.

  “Oh, hello. Thorny!” she said with easy friendliness, which was by no means too cordial. “What a surprise! I didn’t know you were in this country. And I didn’t know you rode. When did you take that up?”

  “Oh, I’ve been abroad for the most part of the past year. Been specializing in horses, polo, racing, and so forth. I just ran home for a few weeks to rest up a little and look into the possibilities over here. Of course, I shall be in college somewhere this fall, either here or abroad again, but the main thing is my polo, which college will give me the best offer.”