Amorelle (8 page)

Amorelle read so far and then, jumping to her feet, tore the letter in half and in half again. Taking a match from the brass safe on the mantel, she set fire to it and watched it burn in the empty grate till it shriveled to a crisp. One sentence that she had not read till then stood clearly out above the hated signature of Lemuel Pike before the flame died out. She could not help but read it.

“Oh!” gasped Amorelle and laughed aloud. “Oh! How very, very funny. Estate! Oh, Father dear, if you could only be here for just a minute to laugh with me.”

Then the last flicker died out and she poked the crisp black flakes down through the ash damper out of sight. At least that would be one thing the town should not know. Not unless Lemuel told it himself. Oh, how had he dared write that letter after what he had done? Could it be possible that she had been mistaken in his identity last night?

But if it was Lemuel, what had he been after? Was there some hidden reason why he wanted to marry her, something he had failed to find that he thought he could get only by marrying her? Estate? Estate! Ridiculous! There was no estate. And if there had been,
he
would never have known about her father’s private affairs. It must be he imagined it. She would put the whole thing out of her mind. It was too preposterous even to remember. Oh, would these terrible days never end and let her get away from such abnormal happenings?

Perhaps it was the receipt of this letter more than any other phase of the question that made her decide to accept her uncle’s invitation at once, just as soon as she could possibly get away. She had a strange uneasiness about Lemuel Pike. What might he not do next?

So that night she wrote her uncle and aunt, addressing the letter to both of them and setting a definite time for her arrival.

W
hen the manse was thoroughly cleaned, everything sold or stored or packed, and she herself ready to leave, it appeared that the church had arranged a farewell reception for her. They didn’t call it that. They said it was just a quiet little gathering of her friends to say good-bye, but they were so insistent about it that she could not in decency refuse to stay a couple of days longer.

She went around in a fever of dread lest she should encounter Lemuel Pike, but some of the dear church friends kept her so busy coming to dinner and breakfast and tea and staying all night that there was no chance, and she was well guarded.

He did appear on the fringes at the farewell party and did his best to get near her. But she was so surrounded that he had no word with her in private, and no one noticed that she did not respond to his salutation as he passed her in the throng. She was cold and hot and frightened when she caught his eye across the room and turned away as if she had not seen him, but she kept continually envisioning him with his flashlight poking under the study carpet and wondered how he had the nerve to be present. Was it just another bit of evidence to prove him innocent in case anyone had suspected him?

But she saw it in his cold blue eyes that he meant to manage that night somehow to ask her about the letter he had written her, and she was in a panic to prevent it.

At the last she managed to slip away with Miss Landon, out to where Johnny was waiting in the street to take them home, for she was staying with Miss Landon this last night. She drew a deep breath as she sunk into the backseat with her friend and saw Johnny spring to the wheel. Then, just when she thought all was safe, she heard that snaky voice from the sidewalk.

“Miss Dean! Just a minute, please! I want to ask you if you got my letter, and if I can see you sometime tomorrow morning about the matter of which I wrote?”

The words were unmistakable and clear, but Johnny had already heard the low-spoken, imploring words
Let’s go
from the shadow of the backseat, and speeding his motor unmercifully in low and second gear, he roared away, leaving Lemuel Pike’s last words to float harmlessly on the idle breeze. Johnny’s car rattled at a good pace down past the manse and out toward Glenellen by a roundabout way, just as if he were taking Amorelle to one of the houses on the hill to stay all night. Lemuel Pike might be clever, but Johnny Brewster was clever, too.

The ladies of the church had given Amorelle a charming little platinum wristwatch, and the church fathers had given her two hundred dollars, or a month’s salary they called it. The church had also voted to put up a handsome stone, suitably inscribed, over her father’s grave and a bronze tablet at one side of the pulpit. There were sketches of the memorials lying on a table in one of the classrooms at the farewell gathering, and the members slipped in critically and came out proudly. Most of them considered that they had done very well by their departed pastor and his daughter.

Amorelle was grateful and knew her father would have been pleased at what they had done for her. But he would not have cared for the elaborate monument, nor the honor to himself. Still it was gratifying that they had cared to do it, even though there was much of church pride in the act.

The next morning, quite early, the sweet old seamstress arose and prepared a sumptuous breakfast for her departing guest, put up a tempting lunch because Amorelle was going in a second-class car and could not afford diners, and then kissed her good-bye, assuring her again that if her uncle’s home was not all that was to be desired she was to come right back to her and they would manage together. Then Johnny Brewster, wearing his Sunday coat and a collar and necktie, drew up in the grocery truck, put her baggage in behind, and took her down to the 5:57 train. Johnny was cheery and a little solemn as he drove along. But before he reached the station, he had managed to inform his passenger that he had “asked” his girl the night before and that everything was “okay,” and in some mysterious way, he seemed to think that his good fortune was due to Amorelle’s friendship.

“I guess you kind of give me courage,” he said shyly.

Dear Johnny! She tried to tell him how much he had helped her, and she saw him actually brushing a hasty tear away as he drew up at the station in the pearly mist of the September morning.

“Well, say, ya know you ben an awful help ta me!” said Johnny eagerly. “And your dad, well, he kind of gave me the right start in life. No tellin’ what I mighta ben ef I hadn’t turned Christian when he got hold of me, ya know! And say, I talked to Dorothy last night and we agreed that ef you ever needed a home or friends that you was ta come right ta us. Of course we can’t have it grand, not for a while yet, but you’ll always be welcome. I’ve told Dorothy how grand you was, and she says she just loves you.”

Hannah loomed out of the mists of the morning and kissed and cried over her dear young lady and told Amorelle if she ever got a home of her own, she was to send for her, and she would work just for her board. Hannah had brought a whole sheet of hot cinnamon buns that she had stayed up half the night to bake. They were tied in a bulky paper package.

So it was not unmourned that Amorelle started on her way into a new life.

And presently, just before the train, came several others—the senior elder of the church and his sweet old wife; the superintendent of the Sunday school; three girls from her own Sunday school class, giggling and weeping alternately; and lastly a group from the Christian Endeavor Society who bunched themselves together as the train swept in sight and began to sing “God be with you till we meet again,” to the edification of the sleepy travelers on the early train.

Amorelle had packed so that she had only a small suitcase to carry, but almost everybody that came down to see her off had brought flowers or fruit or candy. She was embarrassed with her riches. Johnny gathered his arms full, helped her on board, and stowed all the offerings in an empty seat. Amorelle presently found herself ensconced like a princess among her possessions, moving quickly away from the familiar home station with its blur of loving faces and waving handkerchiefs.

“When life’s perils thick confound you, put His arms unfailing around you—” rang out the song from the Christian Endeavor, and suddenly Amorelle, who had gone bravely through all the farewells, anxious only to have them over, felt a lump in her throat and the smarting tears in her eyes, felt a great wave of loneliness and homesickness, and wondered why she had not managed somehow to stay in that dear hometown.

She stared blinking out into the flying fields, trying to recognize each landmark, grudgingly letting them pass like precious things she might never see again. There was the little brown house where the blacksmith lived and plied his trade in the open shed nearby. She remembered the first time her father took her there when she was a little girl and she had watched the sparks fly from the anvil as the hammer beat the molten iron, while her father talked of another world to the grim old blacksmith who couldn’t see that there was a God because so many of His followers were untrue. There was the road where they used to walk in spring when the dogwood trees were in bloom, the road that wound up the hill and into the woods. There was the little weatherbeaten house where old Grandma Duff used to live. They always carried jelly and oranges to her when she was sick. And there was the country schoolhouse where Father used to hold services evenings sometimes, and she always went along to play the funny cabinet organ and help with the singing. That meant five miles off, out into the strange world alone. She hid her face against the windowpane and struggled with those tears. She must not let one get through, or there would come a torrent, right here on the train, before a lot of round-eyed children in the seat in front of her who were staring at her with all their eyes.

In another half hour she would be in the city station and have to change to the western express, and there were all those gifts, a whole seatful, to be disposed of somehow. What should she do with them? She couldn’t possibly carry them alone. To summon a porter and arrive in a second-class car with them would make her ridiculous for the whole journey. Yet she couldn’t throw any of these love tokens away. Even if she were sure that it would never get back to the dear souls who brought them, she could not bring herself to be so untrue.

So she began to sort them out—the roses from the goldenrod and chrysanthemums, the gladioli from the asters and salvia—choosing a flower from each tenderly with a thought of the giver, laying them flat in a magazine to press. Those she would keep to remember her friends by. The large package of hot cinnamon buns she reduced by more than half by bestowing them upon the staring children, who fell upon them ravenously, evidently having had no breakfast as yet.

There were little gifts in pink tissue paper, tied with ribbon—a lace collar, several pretty handkerchiefs, an embroidered dressing case, and a pair of soft, lovely gloves. Those she slipped into her suitcase, strapping the magazine with its pressed flowers on the outside smoothly. Finally, just as the train was sliding into the city station, she asked the children if they would like the rest of her flowers, and they snatched at them eagerly. Perhaps their mother might regret it later when she marshaled her five sticky children looking like an animated flower garden, but at least she smiled her thanks now upon Amorelle.

So Amorelle gathered up what was left of literature, candy, and cinnamon buns, massed them in an amazingly small compass, picked up her suitcase, and smiled good-bye to the smiling children. They were waving and shouting noisily their farewells and already beginning to quarrel over who had the most roses.

Started at last on her long journey, she watched her way out of the city until the countryside appeared again, and then she put her head back and closed her eyes. She was tired, so
tired
. Would she ever be rested? Would she ever be interested in life again?

Over and over again she went back through the experiences of the past sad week. Sorrow and humor and tenderness. Stupidity and interference and kindness. What a jumble! And those pitiful proposals of marriage. What a travesty! To think that Mrs. Brisbane had dared—for she must have done it! There couldn’t be a coincidence like that. Every one she had mentioned had come and proposed! No, there was one missing; the young minister she had spoken of who was rumored to be engaged. There was no telling but Mrs. Brisbane would even yet hound him on, get him unengaged, and send him after her!

Marriage! What would marriage be with one whom Mrs. Brisbane selected? There were so many married people that did not seem at all happy. Marriage was a big chance. Yet her father and mother had been wonderfully happy. She could remember the days when her mother was living and how home seemed like a little heaven. How her father adored and tenderly cared for her mother, and how her mother was always planning some little surprise for Father, or trying to save him in some way. True married love must be like that, always joyful sacrifice for one another. But love like that would be rare. She told herself she had never seen a man that she could care for in that way, as her mother had cared for her father.

She had asked her father once, not long ago, how a girl could know she truly loved a man enough to marry him and if there were rules to guide one in such a situation. He had given her a curious, tender look and told her she would know it beyond a doubt if she was ever really in love. If there was any question about love, there was no question!

Then he had talked quietly on, almost as if he had been her mother.

“Of course a Christian would first ask, ‘Is he a Christian? Does he know and love my Lord? If not, we could have no true marriage unless I became untrue to my Lord!’ ‘Can two walk together except they be agreed?’There is no point of disagreement worse than between believers and unbelievers.”

He had paused to let her consider that a moment and then gone on to say that even between believers there could be no true marriage without love. Love that forgives faults and failings and loves on in spite of them. He spoke of the love of Christ to the church and how God used the earthly love of man and woman in marriage as a picture of His love for the church.

They had talked that over for some time before he went on to speak of other things.

“It is not usually a wise thing for two people to come together in marriage who are from different ranks in life, different standards of refinement, culture, education. One needs a super love to overcome the differences. Little acts of refinement or the lack of them can grate upon tired nerves and become a great separator. I do not say that it is
never
right for two who have such differences to marry, but I say it is a perilous experiment for which one needs almost infinite love and special divine grace to keep the love under such circumstances.”

The daughter sat with closed eyes, considering what her father had said and wondering idly if the time would ever come when she would be weighing and measuring this question in the light of her father’s advice with any special person in mind. She could imagine that life could be very beautiful with such love and the right person, but it all seemed too utopian ever to happen to her. She meant to keep a level head and try to make a place in the world for herself.

She settled this question with a sad little sigh and sat up determinedly, looking out at the new landscape. She hadn’t been on a journey in several years, not since she was sent as a delegate to a Sunday school convention just before she went to college. Her college had been in the nearby city so that had not taken her far. If she stayed indefinitely with her uncle, it might be a long time before she went on another journey. She must make the most of this while it lasted. She sighed again, thinking what a delight it would be to watch every mile of the way if her father were only where she could write about it all to him. How he loved her descriptions of people and places and things. But now, no one cared.

But she steadily kept herself looking out the window, watching everything just as if she were going to write about it to someone. It seemed the only way to keep from thinking sad thoughts that brought undesired tears.