Of course, Pat wasn’t exactly his style, a little too sober, but if he once got her in her place as his wife he could remedy all that. Then, too, her mother would be an awful pill to have around, but he’d take good care to locate pretty far away from her. He wanted no relatives of his own or hers to do any curbing to his plans.
So he went patiently around between his several events in the world of horses, trailing Patricia, watching her, studying her, and when his lighthearted nature was too bored with her quietness and her determination not to have the kind of good time he wanted, he would fly off for a day or two and find some kindred spirit, either some old acquaintance or one he could pick up anywhere. For Thorny had never been particular about his casual acquaintances. His chief object was a good time.
But he managed to keep fairly sober. At least he did not return to the vicinity of the Prentisses until he was thoroughly in command of himself. Thorny could carry a good deal of liquor by this time without being visibly affected. Sometimes when he considered it seriously he told himself it was ridiculous to think of marrying a girl who would not take even a glass of liquor. But that, too, would be one of the things he could change in her when he got in control.
And so, watching her carefully and going cheerfully with her everywhere she would let him, he came gradually to the decision that he would marry Patricia.
It never seemed to occur to him that she might have a mind of her own about it. Thorny had been admired so much that he thought of course any girl would be glad to marry him if he decided to ask her. True, she used to have a nasty little temper, but she seemed to be pretty well over that. She was gentle and sweet most of the time; only now and then when he proposed that they should go to some nightclub or something of that sort, then she was adamant with her refusals. He’d change all that when they were married, but just now it didn’t seem wise to make much protest, not since he had made fun of her one day about her old-fashioned tastes and her father had appeared casually on the scene with a stern glance in his eyes. Thorny didn’t want to get in bad with the old man before the thing was a foregone conclusion.
As for himself, he considered that he had been very docile, going almost everywhere she wanted to go. Of course she never asked him to go with her, he just trailed along. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have seen much of her. And of course if he had been too indifferent, her mother would have supplied an invitation. But he preferred to trail. That way he was freer. There was only one place where he did not go often with her, where he knew she liked to go best, and that was church. He couldn’t understand why she liked to go to church so much. All kinds of churches; the more old-fashioned they were, the more she liked them. Stuffy, odd churches where the preachers believed a lot of old-fashioned things that Thorny had never even heard of, and preached them hard so that you almost felt uncomfortable, as if they were being preached right at you. That was the impression he had drawn from the few times he had swallowed his distaste and gone with her.
The first time that Thorny proposed to her they were sitting on a lovely hillside overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It was where Patricia loved to come and spend some time with the marvelous view every day while they were in the vicinity. Views bored Thorny, but he always knew where to find her when she wasn’t available anywhere else. So with his plans fully matured he breezed into the picture and dropped down beside her on the grass. Boy, but she was beautiful sitting there against the background of those trees, with light and shadow flickering over her lovely hair! Even without lipstick or rouge she was angelic, and if she were just touched up a little the way women of the world knew how to do it, she would be simply stunning. No, he was making no mistake. The trifles that were not just according to his mind he would set right when he had her for his own.
So with some of his old-time assurance he began, half laughingly:
“Pat, why don’t you and I go get married? Wouldn’t it be a lot more sensible than all this hanging around and waiting that we are doing now?”
Patricia turned astonished, suddenly worried eyes toward him and answered coolly, “Are we hanging around waiting, Thorny? I didn’t know it.”
“Well, you certainly must be blind. What did you suppose I was sticking around for? You know I’m crazy about you, and the natural conclusion is that we’ll be married sometime. Why not now? We can have just as good a wedding over here as we can at home any day, if that’s what you’re hesitating for. Or, if you’re sentimental and have to be married at home, let’s all fly over and get the thing out of the way, and then come back and hike around where we like?”
Patricia gave him a quick troubled look, and then lifting her chin a bit haughtily said, “But you see, Thorny, I’m not in the least crazy about you, and I have no intention whatever of getting married now, or perhaps not at any time, so let’s go back to the hotel. It’s almost time for dinner!” Lithely she sprang to her feet and started slowly walking away from him.
That was the way most of his attempts ended, either by Patricia turning them down utterly or else laughing at him. She simply wouldn’t take him seriously.
“You’re nothing but a boy yet, Thorny. You don’t really know what you want out of life, and perhaps I don’t either, only I’m sure of one thing. I don’t want to marry you. So let’s forget it and see everything we came over here to see.”
“To heck with the sights!” said Thorny. “I can’t see anything but you!” And he said it in such a flippant way that Patricia looked him in the eyes and said:
“Oh no you don’t, either, Thorny. You see every pretty girl that comes by. Don’t try to put that over on me.”
Then he would go away for a couple of days and come back and start trailing her again.
That went on for almost two years, while the Prentisses lingered in Europe. As long as there were plenty of new wonders to see Patricia stood it all right, ignoring him time and again, or putting him off with a laugh.
But when they came home it was a different matter. Thorny grew more and more impatient, and Mrs. Prentiss grew more and more worried.
Patricia began to adopt a new method now, for there seemed no other way to get rid of Thorny, who parked on her trail on all occasions. The people at home had begun to couple their names inevitably, to invite them together, to place them side by side at dinners. It was beginning to get on Patricia’s nerves mightily. An so she suddenly began to cultivate the acquaintance of this and that man whom she met here and there among her friends, or at the club, or out at some house party her mother had inveigled her to attend. And when she began to go out with other young men than Thorny and to flit from one to the other in her attempt to keep her name from being constantly associated with Thorny’s, then her mother was fairly frantic. How did they know who these other young men were? Outsiders, strangers in the town. When everything seemed to have been so satisfactorily arranged, why did Patricia have to upset it all and be so difficult? Thorny was becoming restive under this treatment. Why didn’t her daughter see that herself?
And it wasn’t as if Patricia was a babe in arms still. It took time to know people and find out all about them, meantime Patricia was almost twenty-four, yet apparently as carefree and happy as when a child. When her mother protested, she frankly owned that she did not want to be tied down. She declared she was not sure she would ever care for any man enough to want to live her life out with him. And when her mother asked aghast, “Mercy! Patricia, what else could you do? You couldn’t get a divorce. You know your father would never stand for that!” Patricia only laughed and replied:
“Why, I hadn’t thought about that, dearest. I’m sure there would be plenty of other things to do besides getting married. There always have been.”
“But,” said her mother, “there has always been Thorny!”
“Yes,” said Patricia with a sigh, “that’s the trouble! There has always been Thorny. I never can stir without Thorny, and I’m getting fed up with it.”
Then she flitted away to a golf game with a perf
ectly new young naval officer whom she had just met.
Sometimes she wondered to herself whether after all she had a haunting fear of a possible truth underlying her mother’s words that had prevented her so far from cutting Thorny entirely out of her life. It could be done, of course, if she really went at it in earnest. Why had she not done it? Would she miss him? Had Thorny become a habit? Or was it just that her apathy concerning him was because she dreaded the combat with her mother that would surely come if she sent Thorny away absolutely.
Well, and why couldn’t she give up and marry Thorny? He seemed to care for her. It would satisfy her mother, and in a way she would be much freer than she was now, having to account for every breath she breathed. Or would she? Her memories of Thorny still haunted her. Had he really changed?
But they had nothing in common. And that vague longing of her soul that had never been wholly satisfied, could that find satisfaction as Thorny’s companion? It wasn’t thinkable. Must she just surrender and take life as it came, giving up all the sweet dreams of a home someday where God would be honored and life be an anteroom of heaven? It wasn’t thinkable that Thorny would ever be one who would be willing to have family worship every day. She almost laughed at the idea. Wasn’t that a pretty good guide? Or was she just what some of her friends called her, a sentimentalist?
But she didn’t love Thorny. She never felt happy when he tried to embrace her. She remembered too vividly that time he kissed her so violently in the woods. She would never let him touch even so much as her hand. Always when he tried to be affectionate, she turned away, laughed pleasantly, suddenly asked him a question about something utterly irrelevant, and managed to get out of the room as soon as possible.
Chapter 20
Thorny of late had been exceedingly restive under Patricia’s continued indifference, and one day he broached the subject before her mother.
“I say, Mrs. Prentiss, what’s the matter with your daughter that I can’t get any answer out of her when I ask her to marry me? I’m about fed up on being put off. I think she ought to say yes or no, don’t you?”
“Why, Patricia, how rude of you!” said Mrs. Prentiss.
“Mother, I’ve told him no a great many times!” protested the girl quickly with a light laugh. “The trouble is he won’t take no for an answer.”
“Now, Patricia, I think you ought to be serious about this. It’s time you sat down and really considered the matter. Thorny has been very patient, and it isn’t fair for you to act this way. Everybody knows that probably in the end you will marry him, and you are getting yourself unnecessarily talked about. I don’t like it. It is time to end all this and know just where we stand. Patricia, I am serious. I ask you to set a definite day when you will answer Thorny. A good young woman does not play around with the leniency of the man who wishes to marry her. She does not lead him on, and yet go with this one and that, and leave him to wait her pleasure. I am ashamed of you. It looks as if you were trying to make Thorny jealous.”
“Mother! I haven’t been doing that!” protested Patricia stormily. “And I have never led Thorny on. He knows himself that I have told him no time and time again, and then I finally settled down to just consider him a good friend. But that doesn’t suit either.”
Her mother eyed her in scorn.
“It does seem, my child, as if you were crazy. Acting this way to such a wonderful boy as Thorny. I’m afraid, my dear, you will bitterly regret this someday. And for your own sake I am going to ask you to set a definite time, a day, when Thorny may expect a real answer from you, and you will begin to plan your life and end this suspense.”
Patricia looked at her mother in despair, then her eyes went down for a minute thoughtfully. At last she looked up.
“All right!” she said huskily. “Call it one month from today.”
“Very well,” said her mother firmly. “Put that date down, Thorny, so we won’t forget it,” said Mrs. Prentiss with satisfaction.
“All right, Mother Prentiss, I’ll do that little thing. Although I don’t really have to, you know. That’s a date I don’t forget. May the fifth. That’s the day I came home to go to the picnic with Pat. Don’t you remember? I had the dickens of a time getting off from school that day. I was supposed to be cheerleader in the biggest game of the season that year. And that was the day I first discovered what a little beauty our Pat had become. That was the day my devotion to you first began, Pat.”
Patricia looked at him wide eyed. That day! The day her real torments from him had begun! Not the day she went to that dear home on the hillside! The day the lilies of the valley were in bloom and John Worth had walked home with her in the twilight! Oh, not that day! Not that!
“Wait!” she said suddenly. “Suppose you make it May fifteenth. That will be better.”
“No!” said Thorny stubbornly. “I prefer the fifth, and you gave your word, you know.”
“Yes, Patricia,” said her mother, “we can’t have any backing out nor hedging. That is just what you have been doing for a long time, and I won’t have that going on any longer. We’ll call it the fifth of May, and we’ll give a party. We’ll give a party to all your friends, and you shall announce your decision to them. Now, that’s decided. We won’t talk any more about it. The whole thing is settled and I’m going to send out invitations.”
“Oh!” said Patricia in a stricken voice. “Am I to have no voice in who shall be invited?”
“Well, of course if there’s anybody else besides the ones we want you can have them, I suppose,” said her mother, “but I don’t imagine there’ll be any trouble about that. There is, of course, just our regular group of friends.”
Patricia looked at her mother with stormy eyes and then huskily agreed. But she walked out of the room and upstairs. She stayed by herself while Thorny and her mother conversed, Thorny emerging with a possessive look of triumph on his face, Mrs. Prentiss with the brightness of worry in her eyes.
All the rest of that day she stayed by herself and faced her future, trying to look ahead and see just what was the right thing to do. At last she prayed a sad little prayer, asking the Lord to show her just what was wrong with herself that she didn’t want to decide a matter like this. Asking Him not to let her do anything that would make her unhappiness and wrong in the future. Asking Him to take out of her heart the things that made her unhappy and restless, to show her a right way clearly ahead.
When she crept to her bed at last and tried to see if any answer had been given her, it was all just as mixed-up as ever. There was her mother and Thorny on the one hand, and her own uncertainty on the other. Personally she would have been just as content to go on and live from day to day without considering marriage at all. But that didn’t seem to be what was considered the right thing for her to do, and she wanted above all things to do right. There seemed to be no question of her own pleasure in the matter, and shouldn’t people be happy, be really in love when they married?
“There!” she said at last, unhappily, one day about a week before the party. “I’ll just go ahead to the time, and the Lord will show me what to do then, I’m sure He will. If He doesn’t I’ll be sure He wants me to marry Thorny. But somehow it isn’t at all what I thought marrying would be. I thought it was supposed to make people happy, and this only seems to me like a kind of slavery.”
During the days that followed she tried several times to think of an engagement with Thorny calmly, as inevitable, a foregone conclusion, but something in her continually rebelled.
She tried to tell herself, as her mother had often told her, that all girls felt that way about the man they were going to marry until they were married, and that he was probably her reasonable mate, her “fate,” as she put it to herself. But the future as Mrs. Thornton Bellingham looked dark indeed to her, and she shrank from it inexpressibly.
Day after day went by, and still she had not finally faced the question with herself, had not even told herself whether her answer was to be yes or no. She doubted so
metimes, if even when she stood upon her feet to announce her decision, she would be any clearer in her mind about it than she was now in her present distraught state.
And day by day as the night of the dinner approached, she found herself wildly hoping that some Power, greater than her own, would intervene and save her, or that somehow there would be given some light upon her way.
But now the day was almost upon her, and she was breathless over the thought of it.
She felt as if she were blindly walking into a trap. She was vexed with herself that she had promised her mother and the young man to settle the question on the evening of the party. If only she could go on being free and not be heckled and nagged to make a decision. If only she could be a little girl again and somehow begin life over, like a bit of knitting that could be unraveled to be knit up right once more without a mistake. There seemed to have been some stitch dropped in her life, some loop of life’s thread left out that made all her young span look wrong. Something that might have changed it all to joyous living.
She blamed herself for being weak and unable to stand against her mother’s bitter sarcasm, her hints that she was growing older every day and that she wasn’t treating Thorny in an honorable way. There was something about her mother’s persistence that wore her down to utter discouragement and made her feel that anything, even marriage with Thorny, might be better than being continually blamed and nagged and managed.
And yet—well, there was still a brief period in which to think this thing out. She had hoped that somehow she could get a saner view before the time was actually upon her. Perhaps by talking to someone, even that pilot she had just met. He seemed a sensible person, with a clear brain. Perhaps she could put a hypothetical case to him and get him talking about generalities that would help her. That had been her hope when she impulsively invited him and decided to seat him beside herself. At least he was someone to hold off Thorny for a little while at the last minute until she could be sure, could think just what to say when she was called upon for her decision.