Amorelle (23 page)

“There is something different about you,” said the man, looking at her steadily, rejoicingly. “I noticed it the minute I saw you today. The shadow is gone from your eyes.”

“It’s gone from my heart, too,” said Amorelle softly. “I’d been going through an awful experience for several weeks, trying to find out what was the matter, not knowing what was the right thing to do about it, and I never realized that God would give me all the wisdom and knowledge I needed until you told me. Then what a load rolled away from my shoulders. You don’t know what you did for me that day.”

The glad eyes searched deep into hers.

“And I like a fool tried to stay away from that picnic that day.” he said. “I thought of every excuse I could, but finally I saw that my relatives were terribly pleased that they had got up some young company and a little entertainment for me while I was visiting them. So I went, but it was the last thing I wanted to do; and when I saw the crowd I felt still more aversion, until I saw you. I just couldn’t understand how a girl like you had happened among those others. But then I found out that nothing happens, that God had brought you there and that He had brought me to find you. At least that’s the way I felt about it.”

They were eating the sandwiches now and drinking the bottle of orange juice that Bonny had prepared. Delicate bits of celery and tiny sweet pickles were vanishing, but the two didn’t know what they were eating. It was all nectar and ambrosia. Apple turnovers and cream cheese, they ate every crumb. But they were more interested in their sweet conversation, and they sat talking until the twilight began to deepen in the glen.

Then hastily they gathered up the cloth and napkins, made their way down to the little spring below them to wash their hands, and turned to climb up to the top again to be in time for the moonrise.

They were standing close together looking up the fern-fringed wall toward the luminous evening sky with its opal-tinted clouds, loath to leave the dim, quiet seclusion.

Garrison suddenly took his gaze from the top of the embankment and brought it to Amorelle’s face. How dear, how lovely she was, there in the dimness beside him, her face like a delicate cameo etched against the dark greenness.

Softly he laid his arm around her and drew her gently close to himself.

“Amorelle,” he said reverently, “I love you. Is it too soon to tell you so?”

Amorelle turned to him a face filled with deep wonder and dawning joy.

“Too soon?” she breathed. “Oh, too soon! How could it be, when I’ve been wondering how I could bear to have you go away and I to never see you anymore!”

Then both his arms came around her and drew her close, his lips were on hers, and heaven seemed to come down in the dim, sweet darkness and envelop them. And suddenly Amorelle knew what
real
love meant. Knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. Remembered what her father had said, “When there’s doubt, there’s no doubt!” And then she knew that it was true.

They came out of their trance, presently, to realize that it was getting dark and climbing on a glenside would be difficult with only starlight. But first, before they started, they knelt beside the little spring and prayed together, consecrating their lives anew together to the Lord who had died for them.

Then his arm around her, her hand in his, they climbed to the top of the fern-rimmed wall, feeling their way along the narrow, precipitous path that was sometimes slippery with pine needles and often with cool drippings from the trickling springlets, slowly, joyously, close to one another. They reached the top at last and found a rock in a high, lovely place where they could look out across the rim of the glen that yawned below them, cool and dim, with night sounds hauntingly lovely like music that has never been written.

There they sat close, sheltered by a group of hemlocks, his arm around her, her head on his chest, and watched the rim of silver that amazingly became a great moon and flooded the earth with silver as it came slowly up and sailed over the sky. Amorelle felt that she had never seen a real moonrise before. They would never forget the thrill of it, the feeling that God had given them that great display as a sort of celebration of their joy.

Late as it was when they got back to the cottage, Miss Landon was on her couch in the sitting room awaiting them, and they went in, hand in hand, and told her of their great joy.

The old saint turned her eyes, bright with happiness, upon them and fairly beamed.

“I’m so glad for you, so glad for you
both,”
she said with a bit of tremble in her voice. She put up her arms and pulled both faces down till she could place a warm little trembly kiss on each one.

“I knew the Lord had something precious in store for my little girl,” she said softly with shining eyes.

“Perhaps,” said Garrison suddenly, as if he had forgotten a very important matter, “I ought to have given you some credentials. You don’t know me or my family at all, of course. Perhaps that ought to have come first.”

“You don’t need to tell me or give me credentials, young man,” said Miss Landon lovingly. “I can see it in your eyes. Your eyes look like the little girl’s father’s eyes, and you don’t see such true eyes on a young man’s face very often today. As for your family, I’m hearing you belong to the family of the King. What more could I desire?”

“Now,” said Garrison, when the hour had grown so late that he knew he must take his leave, “what are we going to do next Saturday afternoon? Can we go to the glen some more, or is that too soon for me to come again?”

“Oh, can you come next week again?” said Amorelle in great delight. “How
wonderful!”

“Why, certainly; New York is only ninety miles away. Why shouldn’t I come where my heart is the minute I get a chance? Besides, I have a ring to bring you to take the place of the one I never saw.” He smiled and lifted her hand to his lips as they stood out on the doorstep. “It may not be as gorgeous as the one you used to have, and it never was an ‘investment.’ But it’s been in our family a long time, and there is a story connected with it. It belonged to my great-great-grandmother. It was her engagement ring. My mother has always loved it, and I fell heir to it. It was made by a great artist in jewels. It has a sapphire, a diamond, and a pearl curiously wrought together.”

“Oh,” breathed Amorelle, starry-eyed, “I’m so glad it is not in the least like the other one. I would not want to be reminded of that.”

His glance twinkled happily as he kissed her good-bye.

“Well, I’m glad you told me all about everything,” he said. “Now we shall have no skeletons in the closet. Good-bye, darling, I’ll see you next week.”

The big blue car shot out at last in the moonlight and started back to the city. About fifty miles farther on the highway, it passed a little flivver, standing darkly in the shadow of a roadside inn. Its owner had succumbed to hunger and weariness and gone inside for rest and refreshment.

But the driver of the big blue car had no need for rest. He carried with him a joy so great that he felt as if he should never be weary again.

And back in the little cottage he had left, a girl in the moonlight knelt beside her bed and thanked God for the way He had saved her from sorrow and given her this so great joy instead.

I
n the little roadside inn, George Horton slept the sleep of the baffled and disappointed. He slept so hard that he was late in starting home the next morning and late all along the way. He went home cross to find everything out of joint in the office, and he blamed it all on Amorelle. He resolved that now,
now
, if she did not turn up at her uncle’s house the very next night as he had ordered her to, he was
done
. He would have no more nonsense! He would go after
another girl
.

There were plenty of other girls, of course, and how pleased they would be to see him coming!

The next night he went to the Dean house to find it utterly dark, with no response to his repeated rings. At last he turned on his heel and walked away, angry, furious, determined to get even with a girl who dared stand out against him so long. Who would ever have dreamed that that quiet, meek, little Amorelle had it in her to be so bullheaded?

So instead of going home, he went to see a girl with yellow bobbed hair and very red painted lips and plucked eyebrows.

Before the evening was over, she had made him take her to the movies and buy her a five-pound box of chocolates and treat her to ice cream in the most expensive place in town. It was
awful
to think how much money he had spent as he walked home, and all just to spite Amorelle. But she would see! In time she would come around, he thought. He would keep this up until she understood. She would miss having attention now she was used to it, and when she saw he was keeping his word, she would write a humble apology. He felt he knew Amorelle. She would find out that she couldn’t sit around visiting friends hundreds of miles away and keep him racing all over the United States after her and expect, finally, to bring him around and make him rent that expensive house for her. She couldn’t do it! He would maybe get to think as much of this Gloria Gladwyn as ever he did of Amorelle, or maybe more, and that would serve Amorelle exactly right!

He looked in the mirror when he went to his room and noticed how handsome he was looking that night and was convinced that he was right. He knew what he could do with those curly eyelashes, and Amorelle would find out what it was to do without them!

So he went to bed with vengeance in his heart.

Amorelle liked her work in the bank, and when she went home it was wonderful to find her old friend waiting for her on the couch with that sweet mother-smile on her face and Bonny with a nice meal ready to serve. It was going to be so hard to have this all slip away pretty soon when Miss Landon was called Home.

But there was that other great, deep joy in her heart, that new love that had come, that seemed too wonderful to be true. And there were the Saturdays to look for and plan for. Sometimes Amorelle just longed to tell her father all about this new happiness that had come to her, and often she got out that last letter he had written to her and read over and over the advice he had given to her about marriage. Why, it seemed just as though he must have known how God was preparing a mate for her. And perhaps he already knew about it all. What a beautiful talk they would have about it when they got together in heaven!

But life wasn’t all just waiting for Saturdays either. There were letters—with parts that were meant to be read aloud to Miss Landon—and sometimes Amorelle read a line or two that were her own special property, just to let her old friend know what a wonderful lover she had.

When such letters were read, Bonny would always manage to have the kitchen door open so that she could hear and would hover hungrily and noiselessly at the doorway, polishing a plate or a cup till she almost wore the flowers off, so anxious was she to know every precious thing about this lovely romance that was happening right before her love-starved eyes.

Amorelle had never answered George Horton’s note that he left under the stone on the windowsill. She had read it in Bonny’s presence and had delighted the soul of that old rebel by tearing it up, then and there, and stuffing it in the incinerator outside the back door that was then blazing up with the trash Bonny was burning. Bonny had stood behind the door and watched through the crack and chuckled to herself while it burned. And so now she took her joy and entertainment getting what crumbs she could from this real romance that had come to the girl she so loved.

And when Garrison brought the beautiful old ring with its three gorgeous jewels in their quaint, rare setting, she rejoiced to see it gleaming on the girl’s finger.

It was on Saturday afternoon, just after the holidays, that Amorelle took a letter from the post office as she passed on her way home from the bank. But before she had had time to identify its writer, Garrison’s car drew up to the curb and his smile drove everything else from her mind. She stuffed the letter in her handbag and did not think of it again until later in the afternoon when she went to her bag to get some papers she had brought up for Miss Landon to sign.

Miss Landon was growing daily weaker, like the fading of a lovely frail flower, and the two young people had been giving her as much of their Saturday afternoons as she would let them, for they felt they would not have her with them long. So the days of her lingering were made very sweet to her after the long, hard toil of her lonesome life.

Amorelle took out the papers, and the letter came out with them.

“Oh, here’s a letter,” she said. “I forgot all about it. Oh!”

The two who watched her look at the letter saw pain and annoyance flash over her face.

“What is it?” said Miss Landon with her mischievous twinkle that they hadn’t seen so much lately. “Has George come to life again?”

“Oh yes,” sighed Amorelle with annoyance. “I won’t read it!”

“Oh yes,” said Miss Landon, “read it. Perhaps he’s announcing his engagement! I’m curious to see what stage he has reached. Read it aloud. Russell will enjoy it, I’m sure.”

“I’m not sure that
I
shall,” said Amorelle with a grimace as she glanced over the letter. “I’m beginning to realize that I was terribly blind that I didn’t see sooner what kind of a man he was.”

This was the letter:

Amorelle read only a few sentences aloud; then scanning the rest, she suddenly flung the letter on the floor and burst into tears.

“You can read it if you like,” she managed to sob out. “I can’t. Oh, what a fool I was to think I ever cared for him!”

Garrison came and gathered her into his arms and wiped her tears away gently, but she sobbed out, “I’m not fit for a man like you when I could be such a blind fool as to think I loved a man like that!”

“There, don’t cry!” he soothed with a twinkle in his eyes. “Can’t you be a little sorry for the poor geezer? At least he had sense enough at last to appreciate you.”

“No,” said Amorelle, breaking into hysterical laughter now, “it’s only that he thinks I’m more economical than the other girls he tried to get, and I’ve come into money.”

Then they all joined in a hearty laugh.

Quite soon after that, Lavinia Landon slipped away quietly in her sleep and left them, and they smiled through their tears to see the joy on her sweet, quiet face.

It was several weeks later that a noisy, mud-splashed flivver, driven by a determined young man with grim set lips, clattered into Glenellen late one afternoon.

Somehow he had taken the wrong road and got turned around, entering the town from the wrong direction. He stopped at the railroad station for directions. It always irritated him to waste anything, even time. It did not spell
efficiency
, and he ruled his life by that word. But in this case, he could not seem to help it.

So, much against his will, he condescended to ask of some men who were lounging around the station if they knew where Miss Amorelle Dean lived.

An original settler who had known Amorelle almost ever since she was born looked at him in mild curiosity and drew himself to something like an alert attitude, opening his mouth to answer. But before he could speak, a small boy with freckles and red hair broke in.

“She
ain’t!
You’re too late! She’s married! She went away in a twelve-cylinder car. She’s goin’ ta Europe on her weddin’ trip. You can’t possibly ketch her now. Her boat sailed at noon!”

George sat speechless in his flivver and stared at the attentive group of onlookers while the small boy added a few more details, which only filled him with a finer fury. Then he stepped on his starter and got himself out of that town as fast as he could, shaking the dust, as it were, from his feet.

But as the roofs and spires of Glenellen faded from his mortified gaze, and he collected his scattered faculties somewhat, he remarked aloud to the passing landscape, “Well, I’m glad I had forethought enough not to sign that lease yet! There’s so much saved anyway! What a fool she’s made of me! Maybe I’m lucky after all.”

Then as he reflected on the various remarks that had drifted to him about the house that had been left to Amorelle and the “tidy bit of money,” he added under his breath with something almost like a sigh, “What a fool I’ve been, though! I’m afraid I won’t find another girl like Amorelle!”

But that very evening, celebrating his disappointment in a comfortable hotel dinner, he looked through his curly golden lashes at the black-eyed, dashing waitress and remembered that he still had his looks.