Blue Ruin (15 page)

“Now, Gramma! What are you doing?” he protested loudly. “Muth said you’d be up to some stunts if I didn’t look out. No sir, Gramma, you aren’t cleanin’ out that tin closet this time, not on yer life. Gimme that broom!”

“But Elim, I saw a mouse run under the door.”

“Domakenydiffrunce!” contended Elim. “I’m here to look out fer things like that. You go int’ the living room. I’ll ten’ to the mouse.”

So Elim managed to turn the interest away from the letter, and it was not till several hours later in the day that Grandmother Rutherford remembered it and asked him, “Elim, did you remember to take that letter?”

“Sure!” said Elim readily enough. “Don’t you remember you were killing a mouse when I got back?”

And she was not the kind of grandmother who asked him who he saw and what they said.

About two o’clock in the afternoon Mrs. Pettingill ran over with her sewing announcing her intention of staying till her folks came back on the five o’clock train, and Elim, feeling Gramma was in good hands, took his fishing rod and tin cans and wandered off for a while. He felt the need of a little relaxation after the strenuous day he had had. Not that he had done anything much. It was just the weight of the responsibility. Also, it had been a strain to keep an eye out for Dana’s return. But now it was late enough so that it no longer mattered, for the letter must be already at the house awaiting him, and Elim felt that he would just as soon be away for a little while in case Dana came over to find out more about Lynette. “Let Gramma handle him! Gramma was wise to the whole situation.”

So with a free mind Elim went a fishing.

Chapter 11

J
ustine Whipple did not tell Dana that Lynette had called him up. She did not tell anyone that she had called. She would have enjoyed holding it over Amelia’s head like a lash as one more evidence that Lynette ran after Dana, but she would hold that in reserve for a time when it had been forgotten that she had not reported the call. At least she could tell him later in the day if it became necessary to save her face. It was easy to say she had forgotten or to pretend the call came after he left for the drive.

So Dana Whipple went away into the brilliant embroidery of the June day, even as the day before, without an idea of the changes that were about to enter his well-planned life.

The morning was perfect. That always put him in a pleasant mood. He somehow always had the attitude that bad weather was intended as a personal affront to himself, and he made everybody around him uncomfortable, as if they were personally responsible.

But the day could not have been brighter. He felt no qualms that he was going in the same direction, and with the same eagerness, as he had gone the day before with the girl who was supposed to be going to be his wife someday. In fact there was a slight spice to this day in the fact that he was going without her, going with a distinctly different type of girl, and going on purpose to teach Lynette a much-needed lesson. And he meant to enjoy it while he was doing it. Of course he would be glad to get back to Lynn, and it gave him a sort of satisfaction to know that she was different from this brilliant, vapid creature by his side, but it was good to know that he could adapt himself to all kinds of girls. It flattered his pride that Jessie Belle seemed interested in him. He knew that he was good looking. Well, why not enjoy the day and sample this style of girl for an hour? She was only a child at most.

Nevertheless, so strong was habit, that he felt a great desire to put aside his anger with Lynette for not going with them the night before and take her along on this drive. It seemed a pity for her not to go! And he had told Lynette they would take this ride together. In fact, hadn’t he said something about taking a ride this very day?

And so keen was his desire to have Lynette go along, so proud his remembrance of her beauty as she had stood on the porch in the sunset, that had she been on the porch as they passed, or had any of the family been in sight, he would have hailed them and stopped for her.

But the house stood silent and unpeopled, with that “not at home look” about it. Somehow Lynette’s silent rebuke of the last night seemed to hover about its quiet, shut-up air. The front door was closed, too. Surely they were up by this time! Half past nine! No, nearer ten! Very likely Lynn was gone down to the village on an errand, or perhaps in the garden, or off with Elim. He really must do something about Elim. Lynn ought to make him understand that he could not treat him like an equal in public. Calling out as if he were a kid! And presuming an intimacy because of his sister’s supposed relation. Not only was Elim’s greeting a trifle premature, as no engagement had as yet been announced, but it was offensive in itself. Elim acted as if they had been playmates at least. Elim must learn a certain respect due to position, too. But all that would come into the talk that he meant to have with Lynn that afternoon or evening.

Out on the open road Jessie Belle pleaded to be taught to drive the car, and when they reached a reasonably smooth stretch, where there would not be likely to be much traffic, Dana changed seats with her and began to teach her.

It was perhaps a miracle that they were not wrecked that morning, for Dana was new at driving himself and Jessie Belle was both hilarious and impulsive. They wobbled about all over the road, and Jessie Belle did a great deal of boisterous laughing over nothing and made a point of being frightened to death every few minutes and clinging to Dana in terror. This after the first shock was rather amusing to Dana. Of course, she was only a child, he told himself, just a child with charming, confiding ways.

They stopped at a mountain top to look out over the trail, and Jessie Belle here took occasion also to slip her hand into Dana’s arm and cling. She said the great height, and the overwhelming space of valley and distance and mountains, frightened her and made her dizzy. She clung to him all the time they stood there gazing, but most of Jessie Belle’s gazing was up into Dana Whipple’s face rather than off to the eternal hills.

Jessie Belle continued her clinging when they turned about and went into the pavilion where spicy pillows of pine needles, and Indian baskets, and arrow heads, and souvenir post cards were for sale, and where she made Dana buy her one of every trinket she fancied by the simple device of saying, “Oh, I do wish I had brought my pocketbook. I’d love to have that!”

Before they had finished with ginger ale and chocolate bars and souvenirs, Dana had spent several dollars. He frowned as he put the change from a ten-dollar bill back into his pocketbook and realized how very little was left. Only a dollar and thirteen cents! And all for foolishness! Why had he done it? And Dana had been brought up to be exceedingly careful with money. No member of the family under the eye of the indomitable Madame Whipple could comfortably be otherwise. It troubled him not a little and made him silent and distraught as he conducted the elated child back to the car.

They ate their lunch on the way back in one of the lovely wooded retreats that Dana and Lynette had discovered and grown fond of during the years of their friendship. It was high above the world, with a view off toward the valley, yet screened from the road by tall pines, a little clear space floored with delicate mosses and sheltered about almost like a room, with a great smooth rock drifting out of the moss on the open side for a table, and the air resinous with pines.

If any sense of disloyalty to the wonderful girl who had come here on hikes with him all the years and been true and faithful to the friendship entered into his soul to make Dana uneasy, it was quickly dispelled by his companion. For Jessie Belle was quick to read a man’s face. She knew just when to exercise her charms, and just which kind of a charm to use. She had been quick to note that he considered her a child. That then was her role. A charming child! She even descended to baby talk with a delicious little lisp, accompanied by a drooping of her curly eyelashes and a lifting of her limpid eyes at just the right moment. Jessie Belle’s eyes were not naturally limpid. They were hard and bold, but hidden under those lashes, whose curl had been carefully accentuated with a tiny iron that morning, they acquired a limpidity which was not noticeably akin to stupidity, artificiality, emptiness, and had quite an effect on the unsuspecting Dana. A man brought up under the direct influence of a girl like Lynette Brooke is not naturally on the outlook for deceit in womankind. Jessie Belle chattered on like a charming child. She related incidents of her musical life, largely fabricated of course, or original with someone else. She told of escapades in which she had played a prominent part, and she made him laugh at things he would have preached against. If her naive frankness was surprising in one so young, he rather prided himself that he was sufficiently sophisticated not to be shocked at her. It would never do to let a girl feel she had shocked anyone. So he smiled at her questionable jokes and let her think that they did not bother him in the least, and she led him on daringly. This was no long-faced divinity student, no devoted lover absorbed in his lady, as she had been led to suppose, no knight in high and holy armor. This was a mere man, and Jessie Belle thought she knew how to manage him.

When the lunch was ended she flung papers and boxes away down the cliff without a thought of the disfigurement of the place, and turning with a flirt of her brief blue skirts, flung herself down on the moss close beside Dana, where he sat with his back to a tree amusedly watching her and dreaming perhaps of the days when he would be a great city preacher with girls like this one perhaps, hanging on his every word. A wave of ambitious pride swept over him and lighted his eyes with pleasure, and Jessie Belle thought the look was all for herself. And, well, perhaps in a way it was. She was a type of adoring femininity of which he hoped one day to be the center. That she was a new type to him, and exceedingly lovely in her wild, flower-like way to his eyes, made him more open perhaps to her power; a power that was as utterly unsuspected as a nettle might be in the stalk of some lovely bloom of the field. Dana was as unsuspecting as Adam in his garden with the serpent that afternoon. Life looked all rose color, a garden full of good things, and he the ruler of it all. It was coming near to the time for him to have it out with Lynette. That loomed a little unpleasantly in the near future. But it would soon be over and Lynette restored to favor. Then he and Lynette would take this charming child out together somewhere for the evening, a ride or the movies, or perhaps a concert if there was a good one. And Lynette would be all the more gracious for the rift there had been between them. He knew Lynette. Of course she would be ready to apologize by this time for her rudeness to his guest the night before. For Jessie Belle had by this time established herself in his mind as
his
guest.

And then, suddenly, Jessie Belle, with a lithe wriggle of her slim body, flung herself about and backward, her lovely little head and shoulders lying across his arms, her eyes dancing up into his startled ones, her cheery carmine lips pouting in a laugh half defiance, half daring.

“Oh, kiss me!” she cried childishly. “I’m getting lonesome. You’re so silent and gloomy! Kiss me, quick, or I shall cry!”

Dana stared amazedly at her, the color flaming into his face, and saw his arms close around her, felt his own lips drawn as if by a power without himself, stung into being partly by that challenge, partly by the power of her own tempting beauty.

Was the serpent, perchance, lurking behind the stately pine tree against which they sat, watching, whispering, “Ye shall not surely die!”

With a sudden impulse he caught her close and kissed her, half fiercely, once, and again. Then as if the touch of her lips had brought him to himself and let loose a flood of shame upon him, he sprang up, flinging her from him. The cry of dismay which came involuntarily to his lips for what he had done changed even as it left him into a half-ashamed laugh, and then another laugh as if he were adjusting himself back into the world of convention and tradition once more.

“You crazy child!” he said and tried to pass if off as a bit of fun, the while his stainless reputation toppled before his dizzy, mortified eyes. He had not thought that he would do a thing like that. Not even with such provocation. Of course, she was
only a child
. A kiss like that meant nothing. She did not expect it to mean anything. Her very challenge told that. She was only trying him out to see if he was a good sport. But he ought not to have done it.

Yet there was within him a strange menacing satisfaction in the fact that he had. He stared at Jessie Belle, that forced laughter still upon his lips, and saw a new light in her eyes, a fierce, wild gleam of triumph which only added to the subtle charm of what seemed now almost unearthly loveliness. There flashed through his mind the hillside that he and Lynette had seen the day before, spread with its white cloth of daisies and lighted by the tall spikes of blue flowers, an almost unearthly radiance upon their fairy scalloped bells, tolling the slender whiteness of their frail stamens in the breeze, even a stab somewhere of brilliant carmine in the tiny closed bud. Was Jessie Belle like that? A holy sacrament he had compared it to. Had Lynette been right? Was there something satanic in its beauty?

Even as the thought hovered in his mind he felt her eyes upon him now with more than challenge in their daring triumph. It was almost as if suddenly she held a power over him, a whiplash in her pretty hand, and the ancient Whipple reputation stood tottering on its foundation. Had he, Dana Whipple, the focus of all eyes in the hometown, and also in the seminary, descendent of the great and good advocate of purity and righteousness, had he suddenly done a thing of which to be ashamed?

He tried to shake it off. Tried to face those big, blue, wistful, devilish eyes of hers and show her that it was not so, that he had not yielded to her power, that he had done nothing of which he was ashamed, that she had no triumph to rejoice over, no whiplash over him. He tried to consider her lightly, and his act as nothing. But he could not face her eyes without yielding to them, and so he wavered into that embarrassed laugh and stooped to flick the dread grass from the cuff of his trouser leg.