Blue Ruin (28 page)

There was a breathless moment when the audience seemed to see the multitude around the great white throne and to suddenly realize that the words they had often heard read from the Bible meant something tangible. It was almost as if an audible expression of this thought went through the room.

Lynette’s heart almost stood still. Was this God’s message especially for her? It was in some ways just what her mother had said, and yet—it went further. It was one thing to have something wrenched from you and to bow to God’s will; it was a step further to hand that precious thing over and let Him do His will. Was she ready to do that with Dana? Just give him up to the Lord? Maybe he would find the way to God and know all this deeper message someday, but was she willing that, in order to work this for him, and perhaps for herself, too, she should hand over the thing she prized most in life?

The preacher’s voice broke in upon her agonized thoughts, quiet, searching, as if he bore the message from the understanding God and had a right to search their hearts.

“Very often it does seem as if God requires a lot of us: that this cross makes tremendous invasion, tremendous demands, and sometimes forces the demand to the point of pain when we have to hand over to Him something very dear. We seem all the time to be giving, giving. It seems that the law of sacrifice is tremendously at work. But this is the road and the law by which, and by which alone, the infinite and transcendent gain can come.

“Are you prepared to let go in order to obtain? Let go the temporal for the eternal, the transient for the abiding, the earthly for the heavenly, the present glamour for the ultimate glory? This is the way to posses all things. Christ now has received of His Father’s hands eternal fullness, and by our union with Him through the cross even these lives may become transcendently rich and unspeakably full. Some of us have proved that the things that we were most loathe to let go—but which at length we gladly yielded up—have come back to us with a greater fullness or have been the way of enrichment transcending anything we knew before. The compensation is overwhelming as at the cross we lay our treasure in the dust, ‘the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brook,’ that the Almighty should be our treasure.

“Let us pray.” The prayer that followed seemed to bring them before the very throne and lay bare their lives to the eyes of God, and many eyes were bright with tears as the little congregation rose for the closing hymn. For the service was not following the regular order of the ship. The London preacher was bending it to suit his will, and more than one heart was deeply touched, as in silence they went out to the deck and strove to assume an ordinary manner, glad that the sun was shining and the salt air tasting natural again and they were back to the things that did not condemn. For there in that room where all was usually gaiety, and where there would soon move a free and easy group of worldly people intent on pleasure pure and simple, they had been made to think of eternal things, and it almost seemed as if God had come and stood just behind their chairs, waiting, waiting for something. What was it? Surrender. That was what the preacher said. Oh, not surrender! Not now, anyway! By and by, perhaps, when life was gone and hope was low—but now—Oh, no! On with the dance!

They spoke in lower tones at first as if they were not quite sure the presence was gone out and past them into the infinite again. But then they grew more cheerful and laughter began to creep refreshingly in, and women adjusted their beads, smoothed their Paris frocks, and life went on again in happy waves.

The preacher walked silently away, his head down, as if in prayer. Few ventured to speak to him till he came out into the sunshine of the deck on this way to quietness. Then one young matron bolder than the rest advanced.

“Oh, Mr. Douglas, I think your sermon was perfectly lovely! What a privilege this has been!” And then the mob let loose and lionized him.

Lynette could see he did not like it. He only smiled a sad, wistful smile at them, as if to say, “Is that all that I have accomplished by my message?” and slipped away.

In the dining room they hummed about his brilliancy, his talents, his eloquence, his gifts, but not a word did Lynette hear about his Lord nor the way of the cross. Did nobody get it at all, or was the message meant just for her?

The preacher did not come to the table. Perhaps he did not want to hear their chatter. It seemed a desecration to Lynette to whom the message had meant so much.

Dorothy came late and had a strange look about her eyes as if she had been crying. Afterward she told her cousin, “He made me weep. Wasn’t that the limit? I had to get out or I’d have bawled right then and there like a baby. It stirred me all up inside and I felt horrid, and I just had to have a smoke or I’d have passed out. But isn’t he precious? Darling old Plush Eyes!”

Had scatterbrained Dorothy really been touched by the sermon, or was this only an act, too? Lynette could not tell.

That night she stood alone for a few moments on deck looking out into the darkness. The moon was gone behind a cloud, and the sea looked very wide and black. She was thinking that it was perhaps like the place she was about to enter in her life, wide and black and alone, no stars even, save in memory, to guide the way. Then all at once he was beside her again.

“You helped me a great deal this morning,” he said, just as if he had known her always.

Lynette looked up with surprise.

“Oh, but I was just wishing I might tell you how you have helped me,” she said eagerly. “I needed it. I think God sent you just for me, to help me in the way I have to go.”

“I somehow knew there was perplexity in your eyes,” he said, “and perhaps pain. I thank God if you have found the way. I’ve been praying about you. Do you mind?”

“Oh, I am glad!” she said earnestly. “I have needed it so!”

And then, before he could answer, they were surrounded. The Reamers, guided by the indefatigable Dorothy who had rounded them up even down to her two brothers, surrounded them.

“Oh, Mr. Douglas,” gushed Dorothy, “your sermon was perfectly dear! I’ve been just crazy to hear you ever since I knew about you. Won’t you take me for a little walk, just so I can say I walked with you, the great Mr. Douglas? I’d be so flattered. I want to tell the girls at home about it.”

Dorothy lifted her vivid little impudent face wreathed in smiles, eyes full of pleading, and Alec Douglas laughed.

“With pleasure,” he said, and turning to Lynette, “will you go with us?”

Together the three walked down the deck and around, Dorothy doing the talking, the preacher saying now and then, “Yes, quite so, quite so!” and “Fancy! I hadn’t heard of it!” But when they came back to the door of the main cabin, Douglas left them with good-night and just a lingering pressure of Lynette’s hand as he took it before he left. She knew that he meant that he would remember her before the throne, and their eyes met with understanding, and then he was gone.

The next morning the boat docked at Liverpool and they saw no more of Alec Douglas. He had hurried away at once to meet an appointment.

Chapter 20

D
ana had no intention of deliberately filling in the time of Lynette’s absence with Jessie Belle. In fact it was several days before he would admit to himself that Lynette had really gone without further word to him. He had convinced himself so thoroughly that she was merely hanging around in New York, waiting for him to come down or write or telegraph, or do something, that he would not believe it was true. Of course, he did not know the time when her relatives were sailing, and his pride was so great that he would not go to Mrs. Brooke and ask. So he blundered on, holding his head high and trying to pretend to his family that he knew all about it.

And it was perfectly astonishing how many questions that family could find to ask him, right in public as it were. Even Grandma wanted to know if Lynette was going to Wales. She would have liked to ask her to call upon some old friends of her girlhood who had gone back there after several years in this country.

Dana grew to be quite an accomplished liar, although for the sake of his profession he generally managed to make his answers letter true if not spirit perfect. Dana had great respect for his office.

Amelia began to show interest in foreign tours; she also plied Dana with questions.

And Aunt Justine was simply unbearable!

She kept asking if he had heard from Lynette yet. Every morning she asked that, until Dana told her loftily one morning when he got her alone that it was none of her business whether he had heard yet or not, and he was tired of having to answer her.

And then came that unpleasant morning when that cheap little flaring postcard arrived while Dana was out with Jessie Belle and everybody in the house saw it, not only saw it but read it and meditated upon it, and seemed to roll it as a sweet morsel under their tongues.

It bore a picture of Westminster Abbey, and underneath was written:

Have just been doing Westminster Abbey. It impresses me as having a lot of poise. I’m glad I came
.

Lynette

They passed it around and read it, one by one, Amelia anxiously, over and over, wondering what it could possibly mean. Justine scornfully, knowing she would likely never find out. Grandma with a chuckle, guessing what might be behind the words and keen to read between the lines. She admired Lynette more than any girl she knew. She often said that she was more than smart, she was good.

It was there when they got back, Jessie Belle with a triumphant air. She had made Dana kiss her again. She felt she had gained several points in the game. Dana was half shamefaced, half vexed.

And there lay the postcard, out before them all, and it was obvious that they had read it.

“I wish that I could have my mail put away in my room when I am absent!” he remarked severely, addressing his mother, but looking straight at Justine, who usually got to the front door first when the postman was coming. He reached for the card, but Jessie Belle snatched it from him.

“Let me see? What is it? Oh, just an old church. I don’t see what anybody wants of that!”

But Jessie Belle had read the words, and Jessie Belle was nobody’s dummy. She dropped her eyelashes and smiled a strange little knowing smile. Grandma, eyeing her furtively when nobody else was noticing, spoke out quite clearly. “What’s the matter with you, Jezebel? What have you got up your sleeve? You look like that cat when she’s just finished a bird!”

“Oh, Grandma!” giggled Jessie Belle immediately, dimpling and going into spasms of laughter. “How quaint you are! What will you say next?”

“I’ll see when the times comes,” answered the old lady sharply, and cackled to herself as she buttered a piece of bread.

Dana betook himself and his postcard up to his room after dinner and did not come down again that night. Jessie Belle was bored to death but continued to show that triumphant little dimple at intervals during the evening, Grandma watched her furtively and grimly. She did not laugh the whole evening.

Dana had other mail beside the postcard. One was a letter from a church in New York asking him to supply their pulpit the next Sabbath. Dana wrote an immediate acceptance and packed his bag that night. He was determined to get away from the house, from Aunt Justine’s prying eyes—and from Jessie Belle.

Yes, he had come to know that he ought to get away from Jessie Belle.

Of course, his mother had spoken to him several times about taking her out so much and what the neighbors would say; and indeed he would have been more careful if she hadn’t nagged him so much that he felt he had to assert his own will and show her that he knew what he ought to do and what he ought not to do better than she, a woman, could ever know. He was a man.

And then there was that annoying Bible verse that Grandma had presumed to pin to his sweater. Utterly inappropriate it was, of course, but annoying all the same. Grandma needn’t think that just because the money was all in her trust for him, or practically so, that she owned him body and soul. He wasn’t a little child anymore for her to cackle at and boss. He was a man! A full-fledged minister! And it was high time that she understood. He would just go away a while and let them all understand that he was his own boss.

So he packed his bag and announced to his family in the morning that he was leaving. He had to go down and look over a church. He rather gave them to understand that the letter he had received was equivalent to a call, but that he wasn’t at all sure it was worth considering till he went down to look the ground over.

Grandma eyed him intently. She didn’t hand over a roll of bills as she usually did when Dana was going anywhere, but she didn’t lift a finger to stop him from going. So Dana went, but he came home Monday morning a trifle crestfallen. The church had proved to be a little mission chapel in a new development of small houses among plain people, and they had asked him to officiate at five services and had only paid him ten dollars! He was disgusted. Also, having no money, or very little, it did not seem wise to remain longer in New York.

He rather hoped on the way home that he might find Jessie Belle gone away. She had stated a number of times that he was the only thing that kept her from fleeing this barren waste of desert, back to real life again; and the moral, well-trained part of him hoped she had gone.

Nevertheless, as he neared home, he found himself looking eagerly toward the house to see if Jessie Belle were on the porch or at the window, and he was glad when he saw her blue dress and she came running down the walk to meet him.

Justine was glad to see him returning. That was most apparent. She had been getting uneasy. She was almost afraid he might run over to Europe for the weekend. And Ella Smith was relieved. She had been afraid that Jessie Belle would run away.

Grandma was distinctly not glad to see her grandson return. She felt he was safer in New York, and her acrid remarks told him plainly why.