“Oh, my dear! How dreadful! But you see, that’s something I hadn’t heard. Thank you for telling me. I don’t suppose Mr. Prentiss knows that. That may make some difference. I shall tell him as soon as he comes home tonight.”
But to her dismay when she told Mr. Prentiss, he gave her a mildly surprised look.
“Why, my dear! What’s the matter with that? I clearly remember hearing your father tell me that he himself hired out to a farmer in his youth in order to get enough money to finish out a year of college.”
“Mr. Prentiss, you are utterly mistaken!” said the good lady in an irate tone. “My father never was a hired man! It is strange how you are willing to try and drag your family down.”
“There is nothing demeaning in honest work. It is often uplifting to get back to the soil and down to primitive conditions. In fact, I can think of nothing that would be better for that little prig of a paragon you are always talking about, that young Thorny Bellingham, than to send him to a farm for a couple of years. Let him learn to plow and plant and sow and reap. Let him milk the cows and tend to sheep and chickens. Perhaps it might put some sense into even that pretty little sissy boy.”
“I think you are too insulting, Mr. Prentiss, talking that way about the son of my dearest friend. I think it is contemptible the way you always try to get the better of me.”
Mrs. Prentiss got out her small elaborate handkerchief and began to wipe her eyes neatly, dabbing at them so that her makeup might not be impaired. Her husband looked at her with cold despairing eyes, at her florid complexion enhanced by brick-red rouge and blue-black shadows under her eyes; at her sleek head that was too childish in its outline for a woman of her years; at the brisk, ruddy wave of her hair, hair that he knew was already graying softly before she had it so deftly treated, and he thought back to the days when he thought he fell in love with her. When her hair was a ruddy gold and her gray eyes bright, not hard and cold as now. When her father had been a poor man and the neat print dresses she wore had seemed beautiful to him.
He had been glad to be able to give her beautiful expensive garments such as she was wearing now, but as he looked back, those days seemed so much happier. Amelia so utterly more desirable! That time was not so many years removed from the time her father had worked on a farm. Oh, Amelia had climbed too far on his money and rising position, and now she was insisting that his little girl should climb, too, into an artificial life that money could buy but true worth could not always attain.
He sat there regarding her sternly, sadly, not answering at first. Just letting her talk herself out. And as he watched her he sighed.
Patricia had come into the house while they were talking and, hearing her mother’s loud excited voice, tiptoed softly into an adjoining room to listen a moment and see what it was all about. These were the days when Patricia was always quaking lest her mother would somehow manage to get her out of her school before she graduated.
Patricia stood across that adjoining room in the hall doorway and looked through the partly open door from the library into the sitting room where they were. She could see her father plainly from where she stood. He was sitting in his old leather chair that he liked so much; he wouldn’t let it be taken out of the sitting room even though it was shabby. His head was resting against its back and his eyes were straight ahead studying Amelia, sadly, hopelessly, dejectedly. The late afternoon’s sun came in at the window beside him and shone across his face, showing deep furrows in brow and cheek and heavy lines around his eyes that always looked like cheery crinkles when he smiled at his little girl. It suddenly struck Patricia that he was getting old and was tired of it all and sorrowful. It came to her that he must be as unhappy about the way life had turned out as her mother was. Her mother wanted a showy, luxurious life, an imposing home, and a pliant daughter and husband who would contribute their all to her purposes and have nothing that they wanted for themselves. In fact, she resented it that their desires were not as hers. And on the other hand her father wanted a sweet, quiet home where peace and harmony reigned. He wanted tender words and loving deeds, and he admired real things. And money alone could not buy such things as he desired.
Patricia in that moment, with that image of her father stamped upon her heart, slipped away, feeling that she had suddenly grown up and had comprehended things that were too great for her to understand or remedy. Sadly she stole upstairs and sat in her own room for a long time trying to puzzle it out. Why did homes get that way? Why did fathers have to feel sad about what mothers did and said? Life was certainly a most perplexing thing.
But the rising sound of her mother’s angry voice continued downstairs, and the little girl, suddenly bowed with grief over that hopeless look in her father’s eyes, flung herself down on her knees beside her bed and burst into soft tears.
“Oh, God!” she whispered into her pillow. “Did You mean things to be this way? Aren’t there fathers and mothers who are happy and like the same things?”
And downstairs the battle went on.
George Prentiss did not attempt to give his usual angry retorts to the things Amelia said. He just sat and looked sadly at her, and for once Amelia said all that was in her heart at the time, without interruption. But at last she became aware of the silence, like a stone wall that seemed reared between her conversation and her husband. She looked up from her delicately attended weeping to see why her words seemed almost to rattle back into her face, and she caught that look in George’s eyes, that patient, hopeless look, and she became all at once incoherent. At last she managed to stutter out: “What—what are you sitting there looking at me like that for? Wh–what do you mean?”
He gave a deep, hopeless sigh.
“I was just thinking how different you were from the girl I married,” he said, getting up and going over to look out the window.
Amelia was flabbergasted.
“Different?” she screamed. “Different! And I’d like to know what you think you are? You were real spruce and good-looking, and you seemed to want me to have what I wanted. You don’t think I’d have married you if I’d thought you’d look the way you do now? Going around in baggy trousers and insisting on not getting your hair cut often enough, and sticking an old shabby leather chair around with my nice furniture, making me ashamed so that I don’t dare bring my friends into this room at all. You don’t think I’d have married you if I’d known you were going to be like that, do you?”
“Perhaps not,” said George Prentiss sadly, not turning his head to look at her. “Perhaps it would have been better for you if you hadn’t. But it’s rather late to talk about that now, Amelia. I’ll take the old chair upstairs to that little back room and sit there, if you would like that better.”
There was great weariness in his voice, and humility, and Amelia was suddenly silent, almost as if she were ashamed. Then George Prentiss turned around and looked her sternly in the eye, as if there were still one point on which he was firm.
“But there’s one thing, Amelia, I will have. No matter what you think or want in the matter. Pat has got to have this last year in high school as she wants it! I won’t have her interfered with! She shall not have disappointments in connection with it. She has only this one more year to go there, and it’s not going to be spoiled by any more fool nonsense. There’ll be doings in the school, gatherings and plays and parties and the like. Picnics sometimes, too, and games, and the child has got to be free to attend every one of them if she wants to. She isn’t a girl who will overstep her privileges, and her wants are very simple and usually very safe. I don’t want her school life interfered with from now till she graduates, and I don’t want any other fool nonsense got up like parties in your circle to interfere with what she wants to do there. The same goes with regard to her church obligations. It isn’t much to ask, is it? And after all, she’s part my child, and certainly I’m paying for what my family has. I feel that I have a right to make such stipulations, and I’m making them. And I don’t want to have to battl
e this over again, either. I want it understood that this goes! And what’s more, I mean every word I’ve said!” Then he turned and stalked out of the room and did not look back to see what Amelia thought of it. There was something decisive in his attitude that kept her silent as she watched him walk away.
Amelia looked after him with a hard, determined glitter in her eyes and her lips set in a stubborn way that did not mean George’s victory would be an easy one. But she knew that her former tactics would no longer work as they had been working of late, at least not on those subjects upon which he had declared himself. She must by guile work her will some other way. So it was that when the matter of the spring picnic of the junior class in high school came up for discussion, she knew her time had come to spring some new method on her family.
Chapter 7
The spring picnic of the junior class was an annual event. It marked the appearance of the class, as a class, into the official program of the new year. It was the first recognition of the school that a new class of seniors was about to step upon the carpet. That a fresh group of young people was about to enter upon that serious business of being seniors and undergo the final polishing of their educations preparatory to stepping out into the world to begin life. It was in their minds a most important occasion and had been talked about with great enthusiasm ever since the Christmas holiday.
Patricia had taken little or no part in all these discussions, knowing not whether she would be permitted to attend. So far she had not been counted in on their festivities, because almost always she had had to say that she couldn’t come out evenings or her mother had something else planned for her. These admissions were always made with lowered head and averted eyes, humility in all her bearing. They had been the one great trial of her school days.
So when her father told her the next morning after his talk with Amelia that she was to feel free to attend everything that went on, if she wished, a great radiance came into her face, and she trod as it were on air on her way to school. And when she announced to her closest friends that she was coming to their meeting and going to the picnic and the play and all the doings of the class, there was great rejoicing, for Patricia was a favorite, and not one of them considered her a dummy or a flat tire or any of the other derogatives current at the time. They put the blame where blame should be, on a mistaken family whose word was law.
So Patricia, with great joy, began to tread the normal path of a high school junior and to make her pleasant plans for the different events. And not the least among them all was the class picnic.
It was an all-day affair in the woods, with games and fully planned amusements. Patricia entered into it as she had scarcely ever entered into anything since her very little girlhood, and her father rejoiced to see her bright eyes and sparkling face. He felt condemned that he had not sooner asserted his will and gained her freedom from the constant home surveillance of class prejudice.
When her mother first heard of the picnic, she cast a withering glance at her daughter and exclaimed in a cross between a snort and a hiss, “A picnic!” As if the event in question might have been something in the nature of a scorpion or other deadly beast.
Patricia was engaged in telling her father some of the delightful plans, with eager eyes and a voice full of throbs, and did not notice her mother. The father looked up with a quick warning glance that stopped Patricia in the middle of her sentence, but unfortunately it also reminded Amelia that she must invent new methods immediately. So she set her lips thinly and went out of the room, where she would not be expected to enter into the talk at all. But she did not go so far that she would be out of hearing.
It was thus Amelia first learned that her child was prominent in the plans and discovered that a most unattractive young boy from a side street in the village was associated with her in preparing certain lists and posters, and two girls whose fathers were anything but prominent citizens were on the same committee with her. When these facts first came to light in Patricia’s eager talk with her father, the mother almost forgot her new resolves and started into the other room to make a wild protest. Then something she heard her husband say warned her that she would get nowhere with him that way and sent her back to make other subtle plans. And the next morning, after Patricia had gone to school, she hurried over to her friend Mrs. Bellingham to have a friendly visit with her and incidentally discover what day Thorny’s school closed and when he would be coming home.
But Patricia went happily on her way, greatly relieved that her mother was not interfering.
Later that day, Mrs. Prentiss dictated a letter to Thorny.
Dear Thornton:
Your mother tells me that you are coming home somewhere near the fifteenth of May, and I’m wondering if you would mind helping me out with something that is worrying me.
Patricia’s school is having a picnic on that Saturday, and they seem to think it is quite important that she attend. We haven’t encouraged her attendance at such affairs, of course, but she thinks it is a duty this time.
You will understand, of course, that I shrink from sending her into the woods without some proper person to look after her, and there would be naturally no one in her class whom I would feel like calling upon. So I am wondering if it would be possible for you to go with her and keep an eye on her. There are so many possibilities in the wilds of the woods. I am sure you will understand how I feel and how grateful I shall be if an old friend of Patricia’s can spare the time to attend her.
But whether you find it possible to do this or not, may I ask you to keep the whole thing to yourself, for Patricia is very proud and would, I am afraid, be hurt that I felt someone must attend her, so I am trusting to your courtesy not to tell her.
Thanking you in advance for your trouble, and hoping this will not be a burden to you,
Very sincerely,
Amelia H. Prentiss
In a few days there came a response from Thorny.
Dear Mrs. Prentiss:
O.K.! I get you! I’ll be on hand if possible.
Yours,
Thorny
Mrs. Prentiss, with a little shudder over the form of expression, hastily destroyed Thorny’s note, and with a relieved look on her face went forward with her plans. She surprised her daughter greatly by seeming to enter into all her preparations for the picnic, suggesting chicken salad and angel food cake for the lunch baskets and offering to prepare a basket herself. Patricia was so happy her face was fairly radiant. It seemed to her that heaven had smiled upon her at last and her mother was doing all the beautiful things she had always wished she would do. She was a forgiving little soul and utterly ready to forget all the unpleasantness of the past. Mother hadn’t understood before perhaps, she thought. Now she understood. It was going to be a wonderful year, this her last year in high school. Daddy had made Mother understand that.
“We might have the gardener carry down a freezer of ice cream for you,” suggested her mother. “I suppose they really expect you to do something pretty nice for them, since you are probably in better circumstances than anyone else in the class.”
“Oh no, Mother, thank you!” said the girl, shrinking from the thought. “I wouldn’t like to do anything like that. They would think I was proud. No, everybody has a part in this. We take up a collection of things like ice cream. I couldn’t do a thing like that!”
“Nonsense! That’s ridiculous!” said her mother sharply. “I think you really ought to do something like that. I’m sure your father would be entirely willing to get the ice cream or anything you wanted to give them.”
“But no, Mother, you do not understand. They would not like it. I am just one of them.”
No, she didn’t understand. It was ridiculous for common people to have sensitive feelings like that, and she didn’t believe children of common parents felt that way at all. However, Mrs. Prentiss did realize that if she was to carry her point it must be done subtly, quietly, so she put aside her suggestions and let her daughter have her way.
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There was another clash of both tastes and wills, when it came to a matter of what Patricia should wear on the eventful day. Patricia had selected a plain little chintz dress with small blue flowers sprigged over it, corded with blue. Her mother, mindful of the young escort who was to arrive “unexpectedly,” wanted her to wear an elaborate pink dimity with lace ruffles and a flowered ribbon sash, or else a smocked white silk with pink ribbons, but Patricia utterly refused both even to the verge of tears.
“No, Mother! It wouldn’t be good taste. Not for the woods!” she protested. “All the girls will wear gingham or chintz. We couldn’t have a good time in the woods dressed up in silk and lace ruffles. I want to be free to sit down on the grass or a log and not have to look after my clothes.”
“But, dear, you could take a rug along to sit down on,” pleaded her mother.
“I don’t want to be hampered with a lot of baggage,” said the girl stormily. “I’ve got to be like the others or I don’t want to go.”
“Well, I can’t understand why you want to go anyway,” said her mother with a sigh. “Of course you’re not like the others, and I don’t see why you want to imitate them. I should think you would like to show them what pretty things you have. Things they seldom have the opportunity to see, you know. It might be a real pleasure to them.”
The child looked at her mother in astonishment.
“Why, Mother, they all have pretty things, just as pretty as mine, but they don’t wear them in the woods. I can’t see why you think they are any different from us. They all have nice homes and always look pretty wherever they go. I wish you’d come to school sometime and see them. I’m sure you would get a different idea of them. They are lovely girls and boys.”
“No!” said her mother sharply. “I don’t care to see them. I know where some of them live, and that is enough. Little back streets and two-story houses. No, I don’t wish to go to that school at all. I don’t want my friends to think I am in sympathy with your going there. I suppose I may have to go when you graduate, if you graduate there, though I’m not even sure I’ll be willing to do that, unless it is to show how glad I am that you are done with them all.”