Blue Ruin (33 page)

Elim had heard the study before and believed all and more than he heard. Had he not seen enough with his own eyes? But Elim kept his mouth sealed. Let them find it out all in good time. Lynnie was abroad, and his mother’s heart would only be distressed.

But Mary Brooke, when she heard the whisper that Dana was married to the summer visitor at his grandmother’s house, went to the window and looked off across the meadows to where the blue ruin was long ago covered with deep, white snow, and said, “Poor, poor Dana!” and then after a little, “But thank the Lord if that is so!”

Nevertheless she did not write the rumor to Lynette. She waited from week to week to see if her girl would mention her old friend or give some evidence that he had written. Surely he must have written once, at least. It was not like Dana to let things drop that way! Strange that Dana had not come near either to ask questions about Lynette, to get her address or protest at her running away or something. Yet was it strange? For Dana must have been very angry at Elim. And Dana must have changed as Lynnie had feared or he never would have let things go on this way without some sort of explanation. Nevertheless, she was content to let the Lord take care of the matter and glad, too, that her girl was safe on the other side of the world. Only, if Dana was married, how was Lynnie going to take it when she got back? Was she going to blame herself forever, perhaps even blame her mother for letting her go away in the midst of a foolish little misunderstanding which might have easily been put right?

It was all too deep for Mary Brooke, and so she took it to the Lord and left it there, and asked again for guidance. And by and by she did feel moved to write to Lynette and tell her all about the gossip and prepare her for whatever might be the truth when she came home, but that letter never reached her until long after she was back, for just at that time the Reamers had changed some of their plans, and their mail followed them from place to place, a good deal of it missing them entirely till they got home, so that Lynette, while she was away, was not in touch with anything about her former beau and had no news of him, save Elim’s first outburst.

To that letter Lynette had written a beautiful reply. Elim read it over many times and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand when at last he folded it away in his pocket.

Elim, dear brother (she wrote):

“I’m glad you wrote me that letter about Dana. Of course it was hard for me to read, hard to think you felt that way about him, hard to think he had done anything to lower himself in your estimation. But I felt the love in your letter that wanted to protect me from something you thought was a danger, and I appreciate it more that I can possibly tell you. I trust you, too, don’t think that I don’t. Of course there are such things as misunderstandings and mistakes in this world, and you know that my heart would hope there was some such explanation for what you saw or thought you saw, as you intimate in your letter. I know that you do not lightly speak real evil of anyone, even thought you do not like them, and I know you would not have wanted to trouble me merely because you do not like Dana, so rest assured I shall feel that there is something that must be cleared up when I get back or Dana and I cannot befriends as we were before. Shall we just let the matter rest till I get home, dear? I’ve been learning to trust the Lord with my life a lot more than I ever did before. I guess we can trust Him to this, too. I’m glad I’ve got a wonderful brother anyway, and I hope I may be able to be just as good a sister to you as you are a brother to me.“

Elim went out in the backyard and kicked the snow about and thought a lot about that letter. He could read between the lines that Lynn was feeling pretty bad. He wished he could do something about it. But he couldn’t make Dana Whipple over, could he, not even if he were willing to, which he wasn’t. Dana was a bad egg!

And up in a little Canadian lumber town, quite out of civilization as he considered it, Dana had chosen to hide himself and his humiliation, and was eating his heart out among the grandest scenery that ever a man could have for a background. The people to whom he almost contemptuously ministered on Sundays and Wednesday night prayer meeting were rough and crude in appearance but far his superiors in genuineness of character and strength of purpose, and might have taught him many a truth about the good old doctrines if he would have taken time to listen.

But Dana was only staying there to mark time. The New York elder was writing him again, saying the senior elder was on his way home, and soon they would be able to bring the matter of a call before the church, and he felt certain of the outcome if Mr. Whipple would only hold off from anything else for a little while. So Dana held off, for more reasons than one. He did not want the New York people to hear about his marriage until the matter of the call was a settled thing. And he did not want to bring Jessie Belle out into the open and introduce her as his wife until he had toned her down a bit and molded her into a shape fit for a minister’s wife. He had determined to show his mother and his grandmother that he had not done such a dreadful thing after all. That Jessie Belle had good stuff in her, and he could bring it out. If he was not fully convinced of this in his own heart, he yet so desired to convince others that he felt he could do it in time.

But Jessie Belle, or Jessie as he now insisted on calling her to her utter disgust, did not take kindly to his teaching. She preferred to go her own willful, brazen way.

“Oh, rats!” she would answer to his lofty appeals. “What do I care for all that culture stuff? It don’t get you anywhere. Oh, a church mebbe, but I don’t want a church and I don’t want a preacher for a husband either. Religion is so long faced and gloomy. I want to have a good time. You know you don’t believe all that baloney you hand ‘em out every Sunday, Dana, and I’m not going anymore to hear you either. What’s more, I’m done with prancing around calling those old galoots. Old women that never saw a fashion magazine in the whole of their days and think you’re terrible if you wear your skirts short. It’s none of their business how I wear my skirts or how I talk, and if I want to smoke I’ll do it. I can’t be tied up to your grandmother’s funny old ideas. You take that and swallow it. I didn’t get married to hang around and study the catechism, and I won’t teach your dirty little kids in Sunday school nor try to act grown up and long-faced either. If you cared anything about me at all you’d go out to Hollywood with me as I want you to. We’d both fit in there and have a wonderful time. I don’t see what your grandfather has got to do with it. You know you don’t believe a word you say on Sunday, and that’s a fact.”

Jessie Belle was not happy in the little backwoods town. She longed for New York. She continually nagged Dana for new clothes and to take her to the nearest town to the movies. She pleaded with him to take her to the dances, and when he refused on the ground that it was not the thing for a minister to do, that it would be as much as his position in the church was worth, especially at the present critical time, she stamped her foot and said she hated the old church and she hated him and she wished she’d never seen him or his fussy old grandmother, and declared she would write to the New York church and spoil his prospects for him yet if he did not give her more money and show her a good time.

Dana was almost distracted.

This woman he had married was all and more than his mother and grandmother had warned him she would be. He could not do anything with her but endure her. For her physical attractions, which had been all that had drawn him to her in the first place, had lost their charm for him. She was a lazy, selfish, spoiled woman who no longer cared to interest him and who expected him to wait upon her. As Dana had always been lazy and spoiled himself, things did not work out very well, and sometimes Ella Smith would come down from the hotel where she had got a position looking after linen and creep in and get their house in order. It was a sad state of things, and Dana grew more and more morbid. Only the hope of the New York call held him from utter desolation.

And then one day another letter came from the New York elder, apologetic, but cool. He was sorry, more than words could tell, that he had held up the young man so long. He had not expected things to turn out this way, of course, or he would not have presumed to tell him to wait. The senior elder had come home with his mind full of a wonderful preacher he had met in London. He had been approached before the senior elder had known of their interest in Mr. Whipple, but nothing had as yet been decided. He was enclosing his personal check for a hundred dollars which he hoped Mr. Whipple would accept as a slight token of his own appreciation of this work and in view of the fact that he had been kept so long waiting for the decision.

Dana’s moral stamina collapsed under this blow, and Jessie Belle walked off alone to go to a dance that he had expressly forbidden her to attend. Things were getting worse and worse for Dana Whipple, and the end was not in sight.

So the winter wore away, and spring was upon the hills again, the blue ruin and the devil’s paintbrush, and the stars and gold of the daisy-and-buttercup embroidery, and Lynette was coming home!

Her mother stood at the window one morning and sang the words to her heart, “My Lynnie is coming home.” The little grandmother, a breath frailer than last year, said it with a smile. Elim shouted it to his dog and went to get the fishing tackle ready. “Say, Snipe, Lynn’s coming home!”

Chapter 23

G
randmother Whipple had been slowly dying all winter. She did not seem to have the strength to last from day to day. Her hands grew so frail that she could no longer hold the crutch under her arm, and her feeble knees would bend and give way. Twice she fell upon the floor when she tried to get up by herself, and Amelia and Justine were frightened at her gray look when they went to pick her up. After that she never tried to rise by herself, although she insisted on being put in her chair every morning. She would lie frail and grim against the pillows all day, only her bright, keen old eyes as sharp as ever seeing what ought to be done and directing, driving her slaves from morning to night although there was no need now for such intensive housekeeping with only the three to stir things up and no young folks coming and going.

Amelia wrote to Dana that she thought he ought to come home, that his grandmother could not last long now, and he ought to make his peace with her; but Dana was proud. He would not go home till he had something to show for all his boasting. Grandmother had ordered him out of the house, had said she was done with him; very well now, let her send for him if she wanted him back. He would not come back till he could come with his head up and proudly as he used to come.

But Grandmother did not speak of Dana, and Amelia was afraid to excite her by doing so herself. The days slipped by and the lady grew weaker till it seemed that a breath might blow her away.

Then, one morning, there was crepe on the door and the undertaker’s car in front of the house.

Mary Brooke stood at the window and looked out across the way. She saw what had happened in the night and wondered what she ought to do. Would they consider it an intrusion if she went over?

So the frail old tyrant was gone! Gone with her heart broken by the grandson on whom she had counted! The pride of the house of Whipple, the descendant of the noble minister of God, hiding in the wilderness of Canada!

Mary Brooke finally called up, but met with such a sharp negative when she asked if there was anything that she could do—it was Justine who answered the telephone and who seemed to resent her intrusion—that she merely sent down some flowers and let it go at that. It did seem strange at such a time to let petty differences come between households that had almost been united by one of the strongest ties that earth can weave. But the circumstances were peculiar.

Lynette was coming home the next day, too. And it would be Lynnie’s birthday again, in two days more.

Would Dana be at the funeral? Would the two come in contact again? And what had become of Jessie Belle?

These questions troubled Mary Brooke until she went and laid them on her Burden Bearer and sat down to wait for her child to return.

It would be hard for Lynette to have to go to a funeral the first thing. Perhaps it would be over before she landed. Boats were often delayed. Well, her girl was coming home after the long winter, and she felt that whatever came was going to be all right. The Father had somehow worked it out for her child’s good. Perhaps Lynette would not feel it was necessary to go. Why would it be? An old person with whom she had had little to do?

But Lynette, when she came, looked grave.

“Oh, I would like to go, Mother. She was always good to me. She used to like to have me come over with flowers or read to her. She enjoyed a good joke, too, and she used to tell me that none of the family had a sense of humor, and it was a great lack. She thought I had, and we used to laugh together over little things. Oh, I think I would like to go to the service and sort of say good-bye. I thought of her after I went away. I had an impulse to write and say good-bye or something, but things were so mixed up that I didn’t see my way clear to do it, for Dana or his mother might have misunderstood, but now I wish I had. I think maybe it hurt her a little that I went away without a word. It would. I will just run over and say good-bye. I would like to see her face once more. It was a strong face, I thought, and kind of hungry for love. Not sweet like my grandmother, harder, but wistful.”

And so it came about that Dana saw Lynette for the first time since that night in the sunset, standing beside his grandmother’s coffin, looking down into the rugged old face that death had softened and dignified; and there were tears upon her lashes.

He was startled at her beauty. He somehow had not remembered how rare and fine she was. Getting used to Jessie had taken the edge off from his memories. He studied her without seeming to do so. Yes, she had changed. She had acquired a certain something which he used to call poise. He could see it in the very way she entered the room, the way she stood and touched the flowers, the way she smiled when someone gave her a chair. In the Paris frock she wore, the chic little hat.