this obvious evil was being done? Why had He not acted for her?
How was He to explain this? His Biblical promises! His perpetual
guidance! His declared mercies!
In the face of so great a calamity, it was very hard for her, as
Clyde could see, to get this straightened out, instantly at least.
Although, as Clyde had come to know, it could be done eventually,
of course. For in some blind, dualistic way both she and Asa
insisted, as do all religionists, in disassociating God from harm
and error and misery, while granting Him nevertheless supreme
control. They would seek for something else--some malign,
treacherous, deceiving power which, in the face of God's
omniscience and omnipotence, still beguiles and betrays--and find
it eventually in the error and perverseness of the human heart,
which God has made, yet which He does not control, because He does
not want to control it.
At the moment, however, only hurt and rage were with her, and yet
her lips did not twitch as did Asa's, nor did her eyes show that
profound distress which filled his. Instead she retreated a step
and reexamined the letter, almost angrily, then said to Asa:
"She's run away with some one and she doesn't say--" Then she
stopped suddenly, remembering the presence of the children--Clyde,
Julia, and Frank, all present and all gazing curiously, intently,
unbelievingly. "Come in here," she called to her husband, "I want
to talk to you a minute. You children had better go on to bed.
We'll be out in a minute."
With Asa then she retired quite precipitately to a small room back
of the mission hall. They heard her click the electric bulb. Then
their voices were heard in low converse, while Clyde and Julia and
Frank looked at each other, although Frank, being so young--only
ten--could scarcely be said to have comprehended fully. Even Julia
hardly gathered the full import of it. But Clyde, because of his
larger contact with life and his mother's statement ("She's run
away with some one"), understood well enough. Esta had tired of
all this, as had he. Perhaps there was some one, like one of those
dandies whom he saw on the streets with the prettiest girls, with
whom she had gone. But where? And what was he like? That note
told something, and yet his mother had not let him see it. She had
taken it away too quickly. If only he had looked first, silently
and to himself!
"Do you suppose she's run away for good?" he asked Julia dubiously,
the while his parents were out of the room, Julia herself looking
so blank and strange.
"How should I know?" she replied a little irritably, troubled by
her parents' distress and this secretiveness, as well as Esta's
action. "She never said anything to me. I should think she'd be
ashamed of herself if she has."
Julia, being colder emotionally than either Esta or Clyde, was more
considerate of her parents in a conventional way, and hence
sorrier. True, she did not quite gather what it meant, but she
suspected something, for she had talked occasionally with girls,
but in a very guarded and conservative way. Now, however, it was
more the way in which Esta had chosen to leave, deserting her
parents and her brothers and herself, that caused her to be angry
with her, for why should she go and do anything which would
distress her parents in this dreadful fashion. It was dreadful.
The air was thick with misery.
And as his parents talked in their little room, Clyde brooded too,
for he was intensely curious about life now. What was it Esta had
really done? Was it, as he feared and thought, one of those
dreadful runaway or sexually disagreeable affairs which the boys on
the streets and at school were always slyly talking about? How
shameful, if that were true! She might never come back. She had
gone with some man. There was something wrong about that, no
doubt, for a girl, anyhow, for all he had ever heard was that all
decent contacts between boys and girls, men and women, led to but
one thing--marriage. And now Esta, in addition to their other
troubles, had gone and done this. Certainly this home life of
theirs was pretty dark now, and it would be darker instead of
brighter because of this.
Presently the parents came out, and then Mrs. Griffiths' face, if
still set and constrained, was somehow a little different, less
savage perhaps, more hopelessly resigned.
"Esta's seen fit to leave us, for a little while, anyhow," was all
she said at first, seeing the children waiting curiously. "Now,
you're not to worry about her at all, or think any more about it.
She'll come back after a while, I'm sure. She has chosen to go her
own way, for a time, for some reason. The Lord's will be done."
("Blessed be the name of the Lord!" interpolated Asa.) "I thought
she was happy here with us, but apparently she wasn't. She must
see something of the world for herself, I suppose." (Here Asa put
in another Tst! Tst! Tst!) "But we mustn't harbor hard thoughts.
That won't do any good now--only thoughts of love and kindness."
Yet she said this with a kind of sternness that somehow belied it--
a click of the voice, as it were. "We can only hope that she will
soon see how foolish she has been, and unthinking, and come back.
She can't prosper on the course she's going now. It isn't the
Lord's way or will. She's too young and she's made a mistake. But
we can forgive her. We must. Our hearts must be kept open, soft
and tender." She talked as though she were addressing a meeting,
but with a hard, sad, frozen face and voice. "Now, all of you go
to bed. We can only pray now, and hope, morning, noon and night,
that no evil will befall her. I wish she hadn't done that," she
added, quite out of keeping with the rest of her statement and
really not thinking of the children as present at all--just of
Esta.
But Asa!
Such a father, as Clyde often thought, afterwards.
Apart from his own misery, he seemed only to note and be impressed
by the more significant misery of his wife. During all this, he
had stood foolishly to one side--short, gray, frizzled, inadequate.
"Well, blessed be the name of the Lord," he interpolated from time
to time. "We must keep our hearts open. Yes, we mustn't judge.
We must only hope for the best. Yes, yes! Praise the Lord--we
must praise the Lord! Amen! Oh, yes! Tst! Tst! Tst!"
"If any one asks where she is," continued Mrs. Griffiths after a
time, quite ignoring her spouse and addressing the children, who
had drawn near her, "we will say that she has gone on a visit to
some of my relatives back in Tonawanda. That won't be the truth,
exactly, but then we don't know where she is or what the truth is--
and she may come back. So we must not say or do anything that will
injure her until we know."
"Yes, praise the Lord!" called Asa, feebly.
"So if any one should inquire at any time, until we know, we will
say that."
"Sure," put in Clyde, helpfully, and Julia added, "All right."
Mrs. Griffiths paused and looked firmly and yet apologetically at
her children. Asa, for his part, emitted another "Tst! Tst! Tst!"
and then the children were waved to bed.
At that, Clyde, who really wanted to know what Esta's letter had
said, but was convinced from long experience that his mother would
not let him know unless she chose, returned to his room again, for
he was tired. Why didn't they search more if there was hope of
finding her? Where was she now--at this minute? On some train
somewhere? Evidently she didn't want to be found. She was
probably dissatisfied, just as he was. Here he was, thinking so
recently of going away somewhere himself, wondering how the family
would take it, and now she had gone before him. How would that
affect his point of view and action in the future? Truly, in spite
of his father's and mother's misery, he could not see that her
going was such a calamity, not from the GOING point of view, at any
rate. It was only another something which hinted that things were
not right here. Mission work was nothing. All this religious
emotion and talk was not so much either. It hadn't saved Esta.
Evidently, like himself, she didn't believe so much in it, either.
Chapter 4
The effect of this particular conclusion was to cause Clyde to
think harder than ever about himself. And the principal result of
his thinking was that he must do something for himself and soon.
Up to this time the best he had been able to do was to work at such
odd jobs as befall all boys between their twelfth and fifteenth
years: assisting a man who had a paper route during the summer
months of one year, working in the basement of a five-and-ten-cent
store all one summer long, and on Saturdays, for a period during
the winter, opening boxes and unpacking goods, for which he
received the munificent sum of five dollars a week, a sum which at
the time seemed almost a fortune. He felt himself rich and, in the
face of the opposition of his parents, who were opposed to the
theater and motion pictures also, as being not only worldly, but
sinful, he could occasionally go to one or another of those--in the
gallery--a form of diversion which he had to conceal from his
parents. Yet that did not deter him. He felt that he had a right
to go with his own money; also to take his younger brother Frank,
who was glad enough to go with him and say nothing.
Later in the same year, wishing to get out of school because he
already felt himself very much belated in the race, he secured a
place as an assistant to a soda water clerk in one of the cheaper
drug stores of the city, which adjoined a theater and enjoyed not a
little patronage of this sort. A sign--"Boy Wanted"--since it was
directly on his way to school, first interested him. Later, in
conversation with the young man whose assistant he was to be, and
from whom he was to learn the trade, assuming that he was
sufficiently willing and facile, he gathered that if he mastered
this art, he might make as much as fifteen and even eighteen
dollars a week. It was rumored that Stroud's at the corner of 14th
and Baltimore streets paid that much to two of their clerks. The
particular store to which he was applying paid only twelve, the
standard salary of most places.
But to acquire this art, as he was now informed, required time and
the friendly help of an expert. If he wished to come here and work
for five to begin with--well, six, then, since his face fell--he
might soon expect to know a great deal about the art of mixing
sweet drinks and decorating a large variety of ice creams with
liquid sweets, thus turning them into sundaes. For the time being
apprenticeship meant washing and polishing all the machinery and
implements of this particular counter, to say nothing of opening
and sweeping out the store at so early an hour as seven-thirty,
dusting, and delivering such orders as the owner of this drug store
chose to send out by him. At such idle moments as his immediate
superior--a Mr. Sieberling--twenty, dashing, self-confident,
talkative, was too busy to fill all the orders, he might be called
upon to mix such minor drinks--lemonades, Coca-Colas and the like--
as the trade demanded.
Yet this interesting position, after due consultation with his
mother, he decided to take. For one thing, it would provide him,
as he suspected, with all the ice-cream sodas he desired, free--an
advantage not to be disregarded. In the next place, as he saw it
at the time, it was an open door to a trade--something which he
lacked. Further, and not at all disadvantageously as he saw it,
this store required his presence at night as late as twelve
o'clock, with certain hours off during the day to compensate for
this. And this took him out of his home at night--out of the ten-
o'clock-boy class at last. They could not ask him to attend any
meetings save on Sunday, and not even then, since he was supposed
to work Sunday afternoons and evenings.
Next, the clerk who manipulated this particular soda fountain,
quite regularly received passes from the manager of the theater
next door, and into the lobby of which one door to the drug store
gave--a most fascinating connection to Clyde. It seemed so
interesting to be working for a drug store thus intimately
connected with a theater.
And best of all, as Clyde now found to his pleasure, and yet
despair at times, the place was visited, just before and after the
show on matinee days, by bevies of girls, single and en suite, who
sat at the counter and giggled and chattered and gave their hair
and their complexions last perfecting touches before the mirror.
And Clyde, callow and inexperienced in the ways of the world, and
those of the opposite sex, was never weary of observing the beauty,
the daring, the self-sufficiency and the sweetness of these, as he
saw them. For the first time in his life, while he busied himself
with washing glasses, filling the ice-cream and syrup containers,
arranging the lemons and oranges in the trays, he had an almost
uninterrupted opportunity of studying these girls at close range.
The wonder of them! For the most part, they were so well-dressed
and smart-looking--the rings, pins, furs, delightful hats, pretty
shoes they wore. And so often he overheard them discussing such
interesting things--parties, dances, dinners, the shows they had
seen, the places in or near Kansas City to which they were soon
going, the difference between the styles of this year and last, the
fascination of certain actors and actresses--principally actors--
who were now playing or soon coming to the city. And to this day,
in his own home he had heard nothing of all this.
And very often one or another of these young beauties was
