Blue Ruin (8 page)

Her laugh rang out like a chime of silver bells, and the dimple flashed full at him and stayed for a whole second. It was simply breathtaking; he had never seen anything so pretty in his life. He almost ran full into an old gentleman driving a Ford coup and righted himself only to grind into the fender of a shiny new car driven by a woman who frowned deeply at him and gave back a full line of contempt for his driving. But Jessie Belle’s laughter rang out and he got himself into the road once more and hurried on, angry for once with himself, for losing his head. A pretty child, just a pretty child of course, but a really bewitching one! Lynette would be charmed with her. He must take her over at once and get them acquainted. It was going to be quite amusing having her in the house all summer, instead of a nuisance as he had expected. What ridiculous ideas she must have about religion. It would be interesting to set her straight. A good mission to begin on. But he must let her see that her straightlaced idea of a minister was all wrong. Ministers were not like that nowadays.

Ella Smith in the backseat drew in her breath sharply. This was a new view of her daring daughter. In New York Jessie Belle had kept her friends a good deal to herself. When she brought any of her fellow students home for an evening’s frolic she had made her mother spend the evening with the woman in the neighboring flat. Ella Smith had no idea that her daughter could talk so boldly to a strange young man. And then lie about her father’s going to get an automobile before he died! How terrible for Jessie to talk like that. She hadn’t known that her child would really tell a falsehood. Perhaps she had been joking. Surely she was only joking.

“There’s the house!” announced Dana as they rounded the curve in the road and brought into view the rambling white house in its thick coat of paint and green blinds. The nasturtiums made a bright border to the path from the gate, shimmering in the last rays of the setting sun.

“Oh, isn’t it darling!” shouted the radiant Jessie Belle, to her mother’s deep relief. “I know it’s going to be perfectly gorgeous! But I’m going to be terribly homesick for the first day or two; I know I shall. All those dark old mountains off there that you can’t get away from night or day, and that great stretch of emptiness down there. You call that a valley, don’t you? Why don’t they build it up? It looks too empty. Say, you’ll take me to a picture tonight, won’t you, just so I’ll feel at home? I shall die of homesickness if you don’t make me have a good time the first night. I’m always that way. If I don’t like a place at the start I never do. You’ll take me somewhere, won’t you? That’s a darling!” she coaxed making a cupid’s bow out of her adorable vermilion lips. It was bad taste of course, painting lips, immoral and all that, Dana reflected, but she was such a child. And why had he never realized how attractive it was in a smile?

“Jessie!” flung forth Ella Smith from frightened, shocked lips, “Belle!” she added feebly, as her daughter gave an upward tilt to her pretty pointed chin, but it was futile. The two in the front seat had not even heard. Ella Smith was sick at heart and cast a backward glance and a fearful look at the road as it vanished behind them. If only she could get out unseen and run somewhere and hide. What should she do with her child?

But it was plain that neither of the two young people even remembered her presence. It did not matter what she did.

“Are you going to take me?” urged the girl. “Say you will quick or I’ll jump right out over the wheel and go back to the station.” She was pouting now, adorably, and the young theologue looked down at her amusedly.

“What a child you are,” he said indulgently.

“But you will?” she insisted eagerly.

“Well, sometime soon. I’m afraid not tonight. I have another engagement.”

“Oh, bother the engagement! That’s just what I was afraid of. You’d be stuffy. You’d always be harping on duty and trying to preach a sermon to me. Well, if you don’t go tonight I’ll know you don’t like me.”

Her brows drew down, her lips pouted stormily, and her eyes filled with what seemed like almost tears. He had a strange feeling that she was a little child whom he had hurt and he ought to gather her into his arms and kiss her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, rousing to please her. “It was a previous engagement, you know. I couldn’t very well break it.”

“You don’t like me!” drooped Jessie Belle with fatigue in her tired, pretty face. “Well, you’re only a theological student after all, of course—But if you did like me you’d make a way to take me somewhere when I ask you. I’m your guest, you know. It would be quite natural for you to have a duty toward me the first night I’m here. Oh, you could find an excuse if you just wanted to!”

“Jessie!” called out Ella Smith again in horror, but perceived she had not been heard above the purring of the motor.

Jessie Belle turned the soft contour of her profile toward Dana and swallowed hard with her slim white throat, and set her little pointed chin very firmly with a tip tilt to it; not another word did she say until Dana leaned over and spoke.

“I’ll try to fix it somehow to take you along,” he said gently, as one speaks to a little child. “Of course as a guest in our house I have a duty toward you, and if you want it so much I guess I can fix it somehow.”

“Now you’re a darling again!” murmured Jessie Belle turning the full flash of her dimpled smile at him. “I knew you weren’t a dub. I could tell it the minute I laid eyes on you. Oh, is all that your yard? Why don’t we make a tennis court? I used to play before I went to New York. You play, don’t you? I’ve got some darling sports things. We can, can’t we? Say we can. I know your mother won’t mind.”

Dana had a vision of Grandmother Whipple’s face at the mention of turning her staid front lawn into a tennis court, but he murmured, “Well, we’ll see. Now, here we are. Mrs. Smith, let me open that door.” And in a moment more Justine Whipple came out in her orchid voile and pale ribbons and kissed her guests effusively, and Dana was free to drive on to the garage.

“Now I’m in a pretty kettle of fish,” he told himself disgustedly. “How’m I going to get out of taking that kid along with us tonight? What’ll Lynette think of it? In fact, I don’t believe Lynette will want to go to the movies. She doesn’t like them much. What a mess! I’d like to strangle Aunt Justine, getting me into all this!”

And then came Aunt Justine herself, hurrying along in the sunset with her unaccustomed orchid ribbons all a flutter and her face shining like a pleased child.

“Dana, will you please come upstairs right away and open Jessie Belle’s suitcase? Something has happened to the lock. I think she’s broken the key in it or something and she can’t get it open to dress for dinner. And your mother says will you please hurry right in, she wants to tell you how to serve the chicken.”

Aunt Justine poised like an old robin in the doorway of the garage and then turned to flee before her nephew could object, but he roared after.

“Serve! Serve! What does she mean? I’m going out to dinner. I was invited to Lynette’s. You knew that!
Mother
knew that! I can’t
possibly
be at the table tonight.”

“Now Dana,” said Aunt Justine, turning upon him a woebegone face, “you wouldn’t desert me like that the first night my company was here! You
wouldn’t;
I know you wouldn’t! I couldn’t think it of you. Why, what will they think of you, going off like that? The only man in the family. And a young girl here, too.”

She pronounced it as though it was a young “gull.”

“Well, I can’t possibly help it, Aunt Justine. You’ll have to be reasonable. You can see for yourself that Lynette would be pretty sore. I had to cut my day short as it was to go to the station for you, and you ought to be able to explain my absence.”

“Oh, but Dana, I can’t! I can’t! Really I can’t! You really must help me out this once. I won’t ask it again, and of course Lynette would understand. I’ll telephone over and explain to her myself. That’ll fix it all right. I’ll make it perfectly fine with her. You’ll see.” And she turned as if to go into the house at once and do it.

“Oh gosh!” said Dana now thoroughly aroused. “No, don’t you speak to Lynn. Leave that to me. I’ll have to stay, I suppose, but I wish you and your company were—”

But Aunt Justine did not stay to hear. She started back to the house and Dana looked up to see Jessie Belle standing in the doorway.

“I’ve come down to tell you you needn’t bother to come up. I managed the lock myself, and your mother says dinner is on the table. Are you going to take me in?”

Jessie Belle stood in the glow of the last rays of the setting sun like a vivid little picture, poised slenderly in a bright blue satin scrap of a frock, with her long, slim, pink, silk legs, and her long, slim, pink, bare arms, looking more like a child than ever. A shingled bob, with a few odds and ends of lock curling up adorably like her lashes, set off her white, white skin, and her red, red lips so temptingly pouted.

Dana, strangely stirred, closed the garage door and came, and made no objection when Jessie Belle slipped her soft, pink arm within his and walked beside him confidingly, looking up into his face. Somehow it surprised Dana that they had so quickly got so intimately acquainted. It was just because she was a child, nothing but a kid of course, a very charming kid. But how the deuce was he to explain things to Lynette?

Chapter 6

L
ynette was singing in the kitchen again, perhaps a little more quietly, with not quite so happy a lilt in her voice, yet much of the sadness had disappeared. Here in the dear home kitchen, with its clean yellow floor, newly painted for her homecoming, its white oilcloth tables, and its gracious appointment for work, nothing could seem quite sorrowful. Forebodings fled when she went about the familiar task of making biscuits. The feel of the flour and golden butter as she worked them together in the big mixing bowl was good again. She drew a breath of gladness that school days were over at last! She was back where such pleasant, homely tasks were possible. And these must be the best biscuits she had ever made. She would show them all that she had not lost her skill in the months of her absence.

She smiled dreamily as she measured the water, ice cold from the spring in the backyard, and stirred her batter daintily with a silver knife, touching it lightly as if she were weaving a charm over it. Was not the evening before her? Was not Dana coming back in a few minutes now and they two would be together in the old surroundings? They could talk then, real communion of soul, such as they used to have in the early days of their acquaintance, when the thought of each answered to the other. Why, half of the charm of their companionship had been in their absolute agreement about everything!

Those things that Dana had said that afternoon were a kind of act, of course, that would wear off with his life at home. Probably every young college man got that way, that is in most of the colleges. If Dana only knew how wonderful the spirit in her college had been. She would wait until his prejudices had worn off, till they had been together long enough for him to see that she had gained real knowledge and culture in the college of her choice. But not now; he was not ready for it yet. She would bide her time. Let him get the mists from his own university out of his vision. Let the sky and the trees and the mountains do their work in his soul; wait till he got back to the simple vision of God he had held when he went away. Then she could make him understand. It would not take long. Dana was real. Oh, he could not be deceived by the talk of the day! And Dana loved her. She caught her breath at thought of his almost fierce caress, and her cheeks glowed as she slipped the bright aluminum pan of puffy biscuits into the oven and closed the door carefully. Then the lilt came back to her voice and the shine to her eyes. How foolish she had been to think Dana was changed! And in a few minutes he would be here, and they would have the whole long twilight and evening to smooth the misunderstandings away.

It was perhaps five minutes after that conclusion that the telephone rang.

There was the best tablecloth, and the napkins were the ones that Lynette had initialed the last time she was home for a holiday. There were roses, too. Grandmother Rutherford had sent for those. She had been very particular about the shade of pink like the color of Lynette’s cheeks, she told Elim when he went down to order them.

Lynette did not know it but the ice cream was in molds, a lovely pink rose, a luscious pear, an apple, a peach, and a little white lamb with a pink ribbon around its neck. The new caterer was making a feature of these, and it pleased Lynette’s mother to have something new for a surprise.

The birthday cake stood on the sideboard ready, its pink candles all set for lighting. It looked like a fairy cake in its glistening white frosting, four layers thick, and every layer lying deep in creamy custard, the kind of cake that Lynette best loved. Nobody could quite make cream custard cake like Lynette’s mother, delicate as a feather, luscious with the cream filling so that it would melt in your mouth, crisply sheathed in the perfect frosting that never got too stiff, nor refused to set. It was a perfect birthday cake, a reminder of others of the years that had preceded it. There was nothing lacking to make that birthday table the most beautiful birthday table that any beloved daughter ever had.

Moreover, there was roasted chicken in the oven, just turning the right shade of brown and sending forth savory odors from its stuffing every time the oven was opened. There were potatoes almost ready and crisp spinach and new peas as green as if they were still on the vines, hoping themselves done in the bright aluminum kettle, and little new beets in another kettle, ripe for the slicing into butter and pepper and salt. Oh, it was a good dinner, and it was almost ready to be eaten.

Lynette went to the telephone. It was good to be home and answer the phone again. It might be almost anything. She had been away from a home telephone long enough to get the thrill of answering one again.

Lynette’s mother arose from the front porch with a sudden premonition. Elim had not come home yet and he had promised to be back in time to get cleaned up.