Chance of a Lifetime

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “In training?” queried Sherrill, studying the bright handsome face of the young man.

  “I’m in training for flying. Record breaking and that sort of thing, you know. Want to keep what brains I’ve got steady. Say, you’re something like a flower in the desert, do you know it? So unexpected.”

  “Well, then perhaps you’re a palm tree yourself”—Sherrill laughed. “You see, I was looking around for an oasis, and I had begun to think there wasn’t such a thing.”

  “Let’s sit down and have a chat,” said the young man, drawing up a chair. “I’d like to know how you get this way. I didn’t know girls came like you anymore.” He was looking her over from dainty silver toe of shoe to shining golden crown of head and found her satisfying to the eye.

  “I’m not so unusual in the town where I live,” said Sherrill lightly. “I just come from a Christian home, that’s all.”

  “A Christian home!” said young Fennimore. “What’s that? Never saw one. Just how is that different from any other home?”

  “Why—” said Sherrill looking at him thoughtfully, “it’s a home where God is heard, and where the Lord Jesus has first place. It’s a home where children are taught to expect to be separated from the world. This sort of thing”—waving her hand in a slight gesture toward the other room—”has no place in it.”

  The young man looked at her perplexedly.

  “Do you mean you never have any good times—any happiness?”

  “Oh no!” she answered quickly. “We have lots of good times. But we wouldn’t call that in there a good time. We would call it a nightmare! But happiness? Oh yes, wonderful happiness. We find that in belonging to the Lord Jesus, and it isn’t dependent upon earthly things.”

  She looked up at him with a smile so bright on her weary young face that he was puzzled.

  “Tell me about it, please,” he said wistfully. “I’ve never heard anything like this. It’s almost uncanny. You are sure you aren’t just a spirit? Yet you seem to have a good, healthy look like any other girl, flesh and blood, blue taffeta and silver shoes!”

  Before Sherrill knew it, she was deep in explanation of the plan of salvation. Perhaps he was only making fun of her quietly, yet for some reason God had sent her to this party. She had not come of her own free will. She had no part nor lot in it. And surely if it was of God’s plan for her life that she should be here tonight, then she must witness. It did seem almost a desecration to be speaking of such holy things but a few feet from the maudlin hilarity in the next room, but since she was here, and the opportunity had opened, she would enter and bear her witness. So she told him, in clear, brief sentences, the way to the cross for a sinner. She made it very plain that everyone, even an exemplary young moralist in training, was a sinner. Then she showed his utter helplessness, and hopelessness, till Jesus took his place, and his sin, which put the sinner on the cross, too, forever after, if he would profit by that costly sacrifice, and enjoy the resurrection life, and the power of that resurrection in his own life, and the joy that came from a full surrender to Christ.

  Sherrill had been taught well, and she made it very plain. Not for nothing had she been studying her Bible and gleaning from some of the world’s greatest Bible teachers’ writings. Not for nothing had she practiced on her class of boys at home till they knew the way of life clearly.

  The young man listened in wonder. Never had he experienced the like before. And at a dance! It was a new thrill! Yet there was also deep admiration and reverence in his eyes as he watched her face while she talked.

  “You are talking in an unknown language to me,” he said at last, half wistfully. “I’m not sure but I would like to learn the alphabet, though, and find out what it’s all about. But look here! I’m sitting here making you talk and not doing a thing to make you have a good time. Can’t I get something for you to eat—or to drink?” He grinned.

  “Not anything, please,” she said, with a sudden weary look passing over her face. “There’s only one thing I want, and I don’t suppose that’s possible. I’d like so to go home, to my uncle’s house. There wouldn’t be any way I could get a taxi or anything, and just slip out and go? You see, I came a long journey today and I’m really rather tired.”

  “There should would!” said the young man. “I’ve got a car of my own in the garage, and I’ll like nothing better than to get away from this maudlin crowd and take you home.”

  “Oh, but this is your party! You mustn’t go away,” she said in consternation. “I wouldn’t want to do anything rude—”

  “Rude? To that bunch? You couldn’t equal them if you tried in rudeness. Besides, they won’t even know I’m gone. I’m simply nothing in their young lives now, except a good excuse for a carouse! Go get your wraps, and I’ll be at the door with the car. I’ll speak to my aunt and tell her how you have to go, and she’ll be on the lookout for you when you come down. Don’t worry! Everybody else does exactly as he likes, why shouldn’t you? I’m mighty sorry to have you go of course, as far as I’m concerned, but I don’t blame you at all, and I’ll be glad to miss as much of this rotten stuff as possible.”

  So Sherrill got away at last and drew a cool breath of the outside crisp air with relief, as she stepped into Barney Fennimore’s ten-thousand-dollar car and was whirled away to her uncle’s residence.

  Barney would have liked to park his car in some secluded nook overlooking the Hudson and the moonlit palisades, and hold Sherrill’s lovely little hand in his. Almost any other girl of his acquaintance would have expected that sort of thing. He would have enjoyed taking her in his arms and kissing those sweet lips that were not smeared with lipstick. He felt more stirred by her than by any girl he had ever met, and there were many girls from coast to coast who would have given much for a chance to ride with him and sit in the moonlight with their head on his shoulder, listening to his tender words.

  But there was something about this girl that kept him reverently at his distance. He did not want to desecrate his thought of her by any cheap intimacies. She was of another world. She was holy. Even though he had no former acquaintances by whom to measure her, there was an innate sense of the fitness of things, which put a shining wall about her.

  “I can’t tell you how grateful I am for this,” Sherrill told him when she reached her uncle’s home at last.

  “When may I come and see you again?” he asked. “You’re going to be here some time?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Sherrill, suddenly guarded.

  “Meaning that you hope not, if tonight is a sample of what you will have to endure?” he asked.

  She laughed.

  “It has been very pleasant to meet you,” she said graciously.

  “Then may I come again?”

  “Why, I don’t know why not.” She smiled.

  And so they said good night.

  Sherrill was surprised to find that her uncle and aunt had not yet returned, although it was long past midnight. But it was a relief not to have to explain her coming home before Carol, though that might happen, too, in the morning. But she was glad that she might go at once to bed.

  However, sleep did not come immediately. There was much to think over, and she was too excited to get to sleep. She began to see that life in New York was not going to be a little pink dream of joy. There would be grave questions of what to her was right or wrong, constant questions involving principles for her to settle. This “chance of her lifetime,” as her family had considered the visit, was going to turn out to be more testing, she thought, than anything else. Grandma was right. It was not going to be easy to live in the world and yet not be of it. So far as her limited experience of one evening extended, it was a practical impossibility, and she decided then and there that if she ever had a daughter, she would not put her in such a position. Her very beliefs were an offense, and her presence in a worldly atmosphere was robbed of its power in witnessing just because she was there. It was all a contradiction. She should not be there. And yet she believed s
he had been led to come. What for, she wondered? Why had God let everybody insist on her coming? Was there something here for her to get, even in spite of the worldliness? Had He something for her to do? If so, she must look out to keep the way clear between herself and heaven that she did not miss the leading when the time came.

  And so at last, with a prayer on her lips, she fell asleep.

  The reckoning came next morning about half past eleven, which was the earliest hour that the feminine portion of the family began to stir itself. Sherrill was summoned to court in her aunt’s room.

  Chapter 17

  Aunt Eloise was sitting on a chaise lounge in her room, attired in a pink chiffon, and almost engulfed among little lace pillows.

  Carol sulked in the upholstered window seat, lolling against more pillows, and vouchsafed not even a glance as her cousin came in. The altercation began with the demand on Carol’s part for a real Paquin model.

  “Before you sit down,” said her aunt coldly, “you may go to your room and bring that frock you wore last night. You said it was a Paquin model. I would like to see the label.”

  The color mounted in Sherrill’s cheeks, and for an instant her eyes flashed and she was about to refuse, but she finally turned and went for the dress without a word.

  “Dear Lord, keep me! Keep me!” she prayed, as she brought back her pretty silk garment. “Keep me from feeling triumphant.”

  Eloise Washburn looked at the label, and Carol came sulkily and looked, too.

  “Well, I am glad to see you tell the truth at last. But now, tell me—” she went on as she gave a shove to the dress and sent it slithering to the floor in a little pool of blue lights. “What is this that Carol tells me about your behavior last night? I suppose I ought to have expected it, but I did think you would know the first principles of decency without being told.”

  Sherrill picked up the dress, threw it over her arm, and stood waiting, but said not a word.

  “Carol tells me that she was nearly mortified to death over you. She says you sat out all the dances with the men and were quite rude to everyone who asked you to dance, and then refused to accept the refreshment offered, and finally left without a word to anyone.”

  “Yes, and you forget the worst!” put in Carol. “She simply hogged the host! A stranger just come, and she just naturally flung herself at Barney Fennimore, so that he couldn’t get away to talk to any of the rest of us. I was mortified to death, and the rest of the girls were simply furious! It was pestilential! I can never lift up my head again. And they got on to the fact that it was my cousin that was doing it. Positively, I wish I could leave home!”

  Sherrill stood stern and pale, looking from aunt to cousin in amazement, her lips shut hard and tight.

  “Well, haven’t you a word to say after all that?”

  “I don’t know what one could say,” answered Sherrill quietly, “except that there isn’t a word of that true. If you feel that way about me, I think I had better go home at once.” There was a bit of hauteur in her voice that made the Weston Washburns think suddenly of their husband and father on the rare occasions when he was roused to white anger.

  “Oh, now don’t go and get mad!” Aunt Eloise hastened to say. “You just remember that I’m answerable to your mother for your behavior, and I shall be obliged to write her what has happened, if this isn’t thoroughly understood and made just. Just explain it if you can. Of course if there is any reasonable explanation—”

  Mrs. Washburn realized that any precipitate flight of the guest would be most thoroughly looked into by her husband, and she had no desire to bring him into the altercation.

  “I really don’t see that I have anything to explain,” said Sherrill steadily. “I told you I did not dance before you made me go. But I sat most of the dances in a room by myself, partly because I had been introduced to hardly anybody present, and I felt more embarrassed by my situation than ever before in my life. Also I have not been accustomed to attending gatherings where the young people were intoxicated, and it was most distasteful to me. I have never heard such a lot of silly talk and seen such wild actions. Perhaps it will make you angry for me to say it, but I was mortified to be in a place like that. My mother would be very angry if she knew I had been taken there.”

  Sherrill’s eyes were flashing blue fire now, and her indignation was growing.

  “I certainly did decline liquor,” she went on, with her head up regally. “I have never been in a company where it was offered to me before, and I hope I never will be again. But my cousin is mistaken if she thinks I was rude about it. I simply said ‘no, thank you.’ “

  “And you didn’t know that that was very rude indeed!” said her aunt with uplifted eyebrows. “You didn’t know that that is not being done? Well, of course! What can one expect of a girl brought up in the country, and by a fanatical mother!”

  Sherrill was growing angrier every minute. This mention of her mother made her coldly furious.

  “If you had been there last night, Aunt Eloise, and seen the condition of my cousin, Carol, you would have wished that you were a fanatical mother, too! I heard one of the young men say she was ‘silly drunk.’ “

  She said this and then realized that she was saying the very things she had so resolved and prayed not to.

  “Indeed!” said her aunt frozenly. “Of course it is to be expected that you will retaliate by trying to get something on Carol. Fortunately I have sense enough to realize that you are wildly exaggerating and are speaking out of your ignorance. In this age of the world, my dear, a true lady knows how to carry her liquor without losing her poise as well as a man does. However, that is a small matter. How about your rudeness in monopolizing the host for the evening and then in running away without a word?”

  “Aunt Eloise, I did not even know the name of the young man who came into the library, where I was sitting quietly alone, until he introduced himself to me. I did nothing to make him come, or stay, and when he asked if he could get anything for me, I asked him if it were possible for me to get a taxi to take me home without disturbing the rest. I told him I was very tired and had a bad headache, which was quite true. Then he offered to take me in his car, and called his aunt and made my apologies, so that she was very kind about it. I am sorry if you feel that I mortified you, but I am sure if you knew the facts you would see that I did nothing out of the way.”

  “Oh, of course if you are going to take that saintly attitude, there is very little I can do for you,” said Aunt Eloise. “It is bad enough to be rude and ignorant, but to add egotism and self-satisfaction to the list makes you simply impossible.”

  Sherrill shut her lips tight and remained indignantly silent.

  “However, I haven’t any more time to spare in arguing with you. I can see it is useless. You are blindly set in your own way as I feared you would be,” went on the aunt complacently. “I called you in this morning to advise you of our program for the rest of the day. I have arranged with Professor Fronzaley to give you a dancing lesson or two at two o’clock, down in the music room. Please be prompt for he charges frightfully for every minute’s delay. Then I’m giving tea at four thirty to a friend of mine and her daughter who are going abroad next week, and I shall expect you to be at that, in the receiving line. You can wear the Paquin. There will be none of the same people you saw last night, so it’s all right. Carol will explain to you what to do in the receiving line. I don’t suppose you ever had to be in one before. And then in the evening we have tickets for the symphony orchestra. Carol and I have another engagement, but your uncle thought you might like to go with him. We may be there later, but he always goes so frightfully early, and it bores me to extinction to sit through all that long program. So you’ll have to be ready at eight. The same dress will do, of course. Then on Sunday—well, we can see about that later perhaps.”

  Sherrill took a deep breath and sent up a swift prayer before she answered. “That will be very pleasant, Aunt Eloise,” she said simply, “all excep
t the dancing lesson. You’ll have to excuse me from that. I’m sorry I didn’t make it plain to you last night. I do not dance from principle, you know, not just from ignorance, and I do not care to learn. I hope it won’t make you any trouble.”

  “Principle! Really!” said her aunt contemptuously. “Well, my dear, I shall have to tell you once more, as I’ve told you before, that I am the judge in this case. I suppose that’s some more of your peculiar mother’s fanaticism, but let it be thoroughly understood, once and for all, that while you are here there is to be no setting of yourself up to be better than other people. Every girl in good society must dance, of course, because that’s what they do everywhere you have to go. Also, I’ll have a teacher in to make it possible for you to play a good game of bridge. You may have to take a hand now and then when there aren’t enough players, and you should be able to play well so you won’t bore the rest. I shall expect you to go down for your dancing lesson at two, remember.”

  Sherrill stood looking steadily at her aunt, and when she spoke, her voice was quiet in spite of the rage that filled her soul. “I’m sorry to displease you, Aunt Eloise,” she said, “but I can’t do what you’ve asked. If you feel this way about things, it would be better for me to pack right up and go home, and not make you any more trouble, for you’re asking something I can’t and won’t do.”

  “Mercy!” said the aunt contemptuously. “Are you also stubborn? Well, don’t be childish, and get off that old threat of taking your doll dishes and going home. We’ll waive the whole thing till you have a talk with your uncle. I fancy he’ll be able to bring you to your senses. Now go! I’m sick to death of the whole subject.”

  Sherrill went to her room, struggling to keep back the angry tears and resolving that she would pack at once and leave before anything more could possibly happen.