Then they all piled in, Eleanor in the backseat with Doris in the middle leaving a place for Betty; Jane, still sulky, and John, too excited to sit down, in the middle seats. Chris was in the front, with Chester driving.
Chester slammed the door shut and put his foot on the clutch. Hannah came running with the other thermos bottle of hot chocolate for the twins and an extra milk bottle, and Eleanor looked back at the home she so loved and wondered if she would ever see it again.
The twins were excited now and were talking.
“Daddy, will there be plenty of pigs?” asked John.
“Cut it!” growled Chris importantly and then subsided again as if he suddenly remembered.
The car started and went down the street. Jane looked hungrily toward the Carter house and twisted her neck to get a last glimpse of the drugstore on whose steps lounged two prep boys, smoking illegal cigarettes. She gave them a grimace with her tongue in her cheek, which was not unnoticed by her mother, and then settled down to the excitement of going on a journey. Jane was not at the stage of life where an impression had very deep hold. A new one could easily erase it.
They turned down the street on which the high school was located, and suddenly Eleanor’s heart gave a thud of fear. There had been so many that day. Now what would Betty do? Make a scene, probably. What would that lecturer have suggested in a case like this? But then of course that lecturer would never have allowed things to go as far as this. She would likely have said that the children had a right to express themselves. They had their own lives to live, and if they did not want to live them as their father and mother wanted them to do, they should not be forced into it. Bah, what foolishness it all was. Something was wrong. Why had she not seen it all before? It was a wrong basis to start out on. Expressing themselves! What were “themselves” anyway when they didn’t know what it was all about yet?
Chester stopped the car and got out. He walked briskly up the steps of the high school and disappeared within the great doors. Jane had a satisfying reflection that Daddy would meet his match in the superintendent. Perhaps there was still hope that they might not have to go anywhere until school was over. What a lark it would be then to go off on a mysterious journey to a new place!
Betty was applying lipstick to her pretty mouth, carefully, thoroughly, vividly, behind her largest study book propped up on her desk.
Her seat happened to be at the back of the room, and as the teacher was busy with a class in the front of the room she was not likely to be discovered. It was counted a misdemeanor to apply makeup in school, especially so in that teacher’s precincts, but Betty felt a little pale, and the class meeting to be held immediately after school was one of the places she liked to be particular about her appearance.
Betty never attempted anything but the faintest makeup around home. She knew her mother did not consider it good taste, and her father could not endure it, so she always went early to school and paid a good deal of attention to patting her face into order behind the door in the cloakroom before she went into her classroom. It was annoying to have to plan, and be stealthy, just to be decent. A pity one’s parents were so behind the times!
She was thinking about it as she put the finishing touch to the gory little cupid’s bow she was making of her mouth, her lips pursed up like a cherry, when she heard her name called and felt the searching eyes of Miss House come down and pierce behind her Latin textbook.
Lipstick and mirror went down like a flash. Out came a small white handkerchief and gave a quick polish to her chin while she assumed an interested manner and lifted innocent eyes to her teacher’s call.
“Miss Elizabeth Thornton, you are wanted in the office at once!”
Betty arose, annoyed. Surely Miss House wouldn’t send her down to the office just for brushing up her lips a little, all so quietly in the back seat with no one sitting near to watch her. She had waited till the psychology class came in to recite before she even started, and it hadn’t taken her but a minute.
Betty went down to the desk haughtily to protest, but Miss House waved her toward the door.
“Someone in the office waiting to see you. Professor Morley said you were to come at once!”
Wondering, yet somewhat relieved, she made her way down the hall.
Someone to see her! Who could it be? Surely Dud hadn’t taken this way of communicating with her. He wouldn’t dare openly. He would likely call up and make an appointment in code sometime late in the afternoon. But who on earth could it be?
As she turned the knob of the door there came a sudden thought of her father like a sharp little pain going through her heart. Perhaps something had happened to her father! Perhaps he was worse, and her mother had sent for her! How terrible if one’s father should die, as Hattie Blaine’s father had done last week!
Then girding herself up and lifting her chin a little haughtily she entered the door and stood face-to-face with her father.
She stared at him, half-relieved, half-frightened. Had Chester gone crazy, tracking her around this way? What could have happened? She forgot entirely the vivid color that she had just applied to her lips and could not understand the startled stare her father gave her for an instant before he spoke. Then his voice sounded harsh and stern as he said:
“Get your hat and coat, Betty, and come with me! Professor Morley understands you’re going, so you need wait for nothing but to get your things. Hurry! I will explain it all to you on the way. We are late already!”
Betty’s face darkened ominously, and her little red lips went thin and hard with determination.
“I couldn’t possibly think of it,” she said. “Wherever you’re going, Chester, you’ll have to go without me. I’ve got commitments all the afternoon, and I haven’t a minute to spare. I’ve one more recitation before three o’clock, and I’m not quite ready for it.”
“You are excused from recitations, Betty. I have arranged all that.” “But I have a class meeting and an important report to give. I couldn’t possibly go if it were a trip to Europe. And we have basketball practice this afternoon.”
“That has nothing to do with it, daughter. Something far more important has come up, and you will have to come with me at once! If you have any message to send to anyone I am sure Professor Morley’s secretary will take it for you.”
He turned to the girl at the desk who was discreetly making out index cards.
“Will you kindly let my daughter’s friends know that she was suddenly called away by her father and will not be able to be at her class meeting this afternoon, or her basketball practice?”
Betty bit her red lips hard; she was so angry with her father for mortifying her this way. She tried to think of some way out, but he stood waiting for her and she turned, slowly, reluctantly, and went across the hall to the cloakroom, looking eagerly either way in hopes of seeing some of her special friends that she might send a hasty word of explanation to one of the boys who had asked her to take a ride in his new car that afternoon. She had really been planning to slip away from basketball. But no one whom she dared trust came by, and she had lingered as long as she dared in the cloakroom with her father standing just outside the door. She finally had to come out and follow him down the steps.
Once outside the school she made another stand.
“See here, Chester, what’s all this about? I simply can’t go away anywhere today. I really have things that I must do. You don’t understand what a responsibility a girl in my position has. I’m class president, and we’ve just found out some of the class are trying to put something over on us. Trying to influence the faculty to say we can’t wear anything but plain white muslin dresses at commencement, and a lot of folly like that, and I’ve simply got to go back and put a stop to it. If the vote goes their way it will make us no end of trouble. We’ll have to get up a school strike to undo the mischief.”
Chester Thornton took his daughter’s arm, firmly, but with a friendly touch:
“You’ll find it won’t affe
ct your future in the least, Betty,” he said in a kindly voice. “There are several things you do not yet understand, and I will have to explain, but the main one just now is that you are to come with us at once!”
“Us?” said Betty with a sudden quick glance down the walk at the car that she had merely taken for granted before. “Us?” incredulously. “Really, is this a family picnic? It is a poor time to choose,” she remarked coldly. “Thanks, I don’t care to attend.”
And she stopped short in the walk and looked defiantly up at her father.
He looked down into her face with eyes that were sharp with the pain of disappointment. There was even a look of disgust about the glance he gave her, and his voice sounded entirely unlike the indulgent father she had always known.
“Betty,” he said, “I am quite capable of taking you up and carrying you to the car as I did last night. But, there are several young people up at the window over the front door. They have evidently recognized you. Do you wish to leave the schoolhouse in that manner, or will you walk down and get into the car in the usual way?”
Betty looked up startled, recognized the boy of whom she had been in search talking to a girl she disliked, gave a quick nod and a cheerful wave of the hand to them, and tripped down the walk to the car, vanishing into the place left for her in the backseat with much the same manner that an arrested man dives from the patrol car into the door of the courthouse when a crowd is standing around watching.
Chester was in his seat almost as soon, and the doors slammed shut. John pulled down his little middle seat, and off they went.
As soon as they had turned the corner Betty sat up, her cheeks flaming brilliantly under the generous coat of white she had applied to them a few minutes before and her eyes flashing like two naughty stars.
“Well!” said Betty with the air of a royal princess kidnapped. “I should like to know what possible explanation there can be to this extraordinary performance.”
She fixed her mother with her eyes, but her tone was loud enough to reach easily to the front seat.
Eleanor busied herself with folding back the sleeve of Doris’s sweater that had come down below her coat sleeve and did not pretend to try to answer. Chester was threading his way carefully through traffic, going in the opposite direction from home. Betty grew angrier with every second.
“Is somebody dead? And are we all going to the funeral?” she asked contemptuously. “I’m sure I don’t know who it could possibly be that would demand our instant presence before the afternoon session of school closed. Now, I shall lose my marks on my report, and every mark counts from now on whether I win the college scholarship or not.”
But no one answered. Chester was too much preoccupied in getting through a snarl of vehicles at the railroad crossing to be expected to reply, and Eleanor had stooped to recover her handbag, which had slipped to the floor of the car.
“I’m perfectly furious!” said Betty, sitting up the straighter and looking angrily at first one parent and then the other and then around the ring of brothers and sisters.
“So we all observe!” said Jane quaintly, settling back sanctimoniously. Having suffered herself, it was good to be able to watch someone else take a grilling. Besides, the affair had begun to take on the proportions of an adventure in Jane’s eyes. She was already forgetting what she had left behind in the joys of what might possibly be ahead. Jane was still half a little girl.
But the road wound on out of Briardale, down toward the city, and finally turned into the state highway. Still nobody had answered.
When the car dashed out of Briardale and toward the city line, Betty turned to her mother.
“I insist on knowing where we are going,” she said in a tone that made Chester feel like slapping her. When did Betty develop into such a little minx? He hadn’t noticed it coming on.
“Your father will explain presently,” said Eleanor in a gentle tone. She was still engaged in settling some of the little bags and boxes that had been tossed into the car just as they started. She had avoided her daughter’s eyes, because she could not bear to see the fury in them and so had not noticed her makeup.
“Gee!” said John, turning around and suddenly getting a good look at his oldest sister. “Gee! You look like Lily Whiffletree!”
Now Lily Whiffletree was a maiden of uncertain age and an unsavory character who lived with her blind and deaf old father on the outskirts of Briardale, and her daring outfits and notorious deeds were the talk of the town.
Chester and Eleanor both turned suddenly and looked at Betty, Chester with open annoyance, and Eleanor with horror. Betty became suddenly aware of herself and sought her scrap of a handkerchief in her coat pocket. Her mother’s reproachful “Oh, Betty! How could you be so common?” only served to anger her the more.
“I’m going to get out!” she said and burst into passionate tears.
“Yes,” said Chester, “you’re going to get out, right down there by that brook on the edge of the Willowvale Golf Course, and wash your face!”
Chapter 9
He drew up at the side of the road and opened the door of the car.
“Get out, Jane,” he ordered.
Jane got out with a leer on her elfin face.
“Get out, Betty!”
Betty resisted, but her father reached in and drew her out.
“Now, go down there and wash your face! You can get some of the flour off at least, and if the red doesn’t come off with water we’ll stop at the drugstore and get some acid or something to take it off. I’m not going through the world with my daughter looking like a bad woman.”
“Doesn’t she look funny, Mamma?” laughed Doris. “Doesn’t Betty look funny, all red and white like a circus clown! Why, Mamma! You’re crying. What’r ya crying for, Mamma? Are you crying ‘cause Betty looks like Lily Whiffletree? Mamma, say!”
“Aw shut up, can’t ya!” growled Chris, suddenly entering into the conversation. “Such a life!”
Betty returned with her father from her trip to the creek, looking several shades more lifelike, and climbed into the car indignantly.
“I never heard of a girl of my age being treated this way in my life!” she remarked as she settled back and turned her face toward the window of the car with an air of withdrawal from the world.
Chester Thornton climbed back into the car and slammed the door shut. He waited an instant with his hand on the wheel, and then he turned around and faced his little family, a yearning look on his tired, drawn face that went to his wife’s heart.
“Now,” said he, “we have quite a journey to take before night, and we haven’t any time to waste in talking. There are things that I intend to explain to you when we get to a place where we have leisure. At present, it is enough to say that it is your own doings that have brought this journey about, and that your mother and I feel that it is for the best in every way. Now you know, however much you may pretend that you are your own masters and mistresses, that that isn’t the case at all. You are all our children, and in the eyes of the law—you are still underage and therefore under our control. Also, you have a moral obligation, whether you own it or not, to obey me as long as I am supporting you, whether you like it or not.
“I am taking you on this journey because I feel that it is for your own good, and I shall go into no more detail at present. There will probably be some unpleasant things, and hard things in what is before us, and I expect you to be good sports and take them as all in the day’s work. If you do this you may find that the journey will be a pleasant one. It will be, of course, just what you make it. We shall also incidentally discover who of you are loyal to the family. That’s all. Now, shall we go?”
“All set!” rollicked out John joyously. It was plain that John had no objection to the family flight.
Chester stepped on the gas, and the car shot forward into the clear, cold winter afternoon.
For an hour or more no one spoke save John and Doris who eagerly watched every car they met, coun
ting how many of the different makes they passed and discussing their various qualities. Their chatter reminded Chester of his happy errand about this time yesterday hunting a Mermaid Eight for Betty and planning his Christmas presents. Now, what would Christmas be? Had he done right to bring them all off into a desolate place just as the holiday season was arriving?
But a glance in the mirror showed him Betty’s hard, angry face, fierce in its concentrated fury. Betty was by no means subdued.
He recalled her struggles the night before and her resistance at the schoolhouse. Betty was a problem indeed.
Chester was very tired. He had had scarcely any sleep for twenty-four hours, had eaten almost nothing since noon of the day before, and suddenly he felt the strain. His weary eyes longed to close and his body to relax. His heart seemed to go slower and slower and the tenseness of the atmosphere among his family was almost more than he could bear. Yet he knew he had been right to come. It seemed as if there had been someone leading, choosing this way for him, almost as if he had no choice in the matter.
Eleanor was terribly weary. She longed to put her head back on the cushion and cry, yet she knew she must keep a steady front. It would not do to break down. She felt Betty’s presence like a stranger, as if she had suddenly become an enemy. Her own little girl! It wrung her heart.
And Chris sat slumped beside his father, his eyes down, or out of the window, with a strange embarrassment upon him. What could have happened to subdue him so? He did not even make any display of more than a passing interest when they came upon the wreck of two cars at the turn of a hill. There was a little group of people standing about it, and a state policeman taking names and asking questions. There was no need to stop, and Chester drove straight ahead. Betty seemed frozen to ice. She never moved a muscle and kept her unseeing eyes fixed out the window, as if she had withdrawn to another universe and had nothing in common with any of them. Jane too was sullen and unhappy as if she would like to cry but wasn’t sure it would do any good. She had a kind of frightened look about her self-willed little mouth that reminded her mother of the time five years before when she had run away from her call straight into a mortar bed in front of a new house and got into liquid lime to her waist. It was a frightened, defiant look.