Blue Ruin (10 page)

Elim carved the chicken without a murmur, and Lynette served potatoes and spinach and peas, and passed biscuits and jelly and preserves, and glowed over the roses and the tissue-paper packages she found beside her plate, and was duly surprised by the ice cream in molds—ate two of them, in fact, a rose and a lamb—and joked with Elim merrily, until the spirit of depression was removed and it seemed almost as happy as in the dear old carefree days.

“Gee!” said Elim. “Isn’t this great? I wish we were always just us. Say, Lynn, don’t forget we’re going fishing together tomorrow
all day
. Nobody else along. Get me? I got lots of new places to show you, and there’s a thrush’s nest right where you can look into it from a big rock and watch—”

It was just then that the telephone rang, and Lynette went white and severe around her lips and started to her feet.

“Let me go dear,” said her mother suddenly rising to her feet. “I think that is for me. I’ll answer it,” and Lynette sank limply back into her chair, a sudden pained hush upon her.

Chapter 7

T
hey were sitting down to supper at the Whipple house.

Amelia Whipple, with a smudge of powder still adhering to one side of her nose and the rest of her face hot and steamy from the kitchen, was at the last minute dishing up. A long, grizzled lock of hair that had escaped from its pinning waved over one eye in spite of her efforts to push it back with her tired, moist hands. She did not present the impressive appearance which she had hoped to show to the guests from New York. Moreover she was disturbed by the snatches of telephone conversation which she had overheard as she went back and forth through the pantry swing door to the dining room. The telephone was located in a little back hall that opened off the pantry and constituted a sort of semi-privacy. But Amelia was keen enough to sense what was going on. She knew that Dana had been invited to take dinner with Lynette. She did not like it that this other girl had kept him at home. Little as she really desired Lynette for a daughter-in-law she liked this other girl less, just on general principles. Was she not a girl of Justine Whipple’s selection? That was enough for Amelia. She hated her even before she saw her.

“Dinnah is sehved!” announced Justine at the top of the front stairs, tapping lightly on the guest room door. Her voice floated jubilantly down the stairs and made the old lady cackle with dry laughter.

Amelia walked heavily to the hall door as the guest descended and in a grim voice announced clearly. “Supper is ready!”

The old lady looked up with a twinkle in her eye. It began to look as if life was going to be interesting.

Dana helped his grandmother to the head of the table, although his mother always did the serving from her seat just at the right of her mother-in-law. The old lady kept an eye and hand thus on everything, just as if she were able to be about like other people.

Ella Smith entered the dining room deprecatingly. She had a feeling that already her child needed apology. She regarded Jessie Belle with a sort of fascinated horror.

Jessie Belle looked startlingly out of place in the old-fashioned room, with her high heels, her entirely bare arms, and her vivid, painted lips.

She made the initial mistake of ignoring the old lady, merely tossing her a scornful nod when she was elaborately presented by Justine, and turning at once to Dana with some light remark, as if he and she were the only two people really in the room.

The old lady’s keen little black eyes took her all in, cosmetics, nude stockings, bare knees, short skirt, and long earrings, and when they were well seated she held up the ceremony of grace just as Dana was about to bow an embarrassed head.

“Dana, I wish you would go to the top drawer of my bureau and bring me my black and white knit shawl.”

Dana looked up in astonishment, but arose at once, went to the parlor bedroom which had always been Madame Whipple’s, and brought the shawl.

There was a moment’s embarrassed silence while he was gone, which the old lady did not break by explanation. Amelia used it to cast an anxious eye over the table and make sure she had forgotten nothing. Justine tried to fill it with an apologetic smile at her guests. Jessie Belle was taking a frank inventory of the meal.

Dana came with the shawl and was about to wrap it around his grandmother’s shoulders, when she waved him away imperatively.

“It’s not for me,” she said ungraciously. “Put it on her,” and she waved her hand toward Jessie Belle. “She needs it. The evening’s getting cool.”

“Why, Grandma
deah!”
gasped Justine anxiously, casting a deprecating glance at Jessie Belle.

Dana stood awkwardly holding the hideous knit shawl and looking perplexedly from his grandmother to the girl.

“Put it on yourself, boy,” giggled Jessie Belle. “I pass. I’m roasted to a frazzle now. Nobody could ever drag a shawl on me, could they, Ella?”

Ella Smith shrank and shivered and tried to look as if her offspring were addressing someone else.

Amelia came to the rescue crustily.

“Sit down, Dana, and let’s get this meal started. Everything’s getting cold.”

Dana tossed the old shawl to a chair and went to his place, mumbled a grace, and unfolded his napkin angrily. He flashed a glance of contempt at his grandmother who returned it with a twinkle of grim humor, but said nothing.

Amelia had solved the problem of placing her guests by seating Jessie Belle at Madame Whipple’s left, Dana at the foot of the table with Ella Smith beside him, and Justine at his right and next to herself. She thought by this bit of diplomacy to separate her son as far as possible from this obnoxious girl. Amelia Whipple had suddenly begun to feel that Lynette Brooke was a wonderful girl, the finest girl she knew. It seemed to her that she had always felt so. This girl with the fanciful name had ignored her so utterly from the first moment of meeting that it seemed to Amelia she had made no more impression upon her than if she had been a ghost.

But Amelia’s plan to separate the girl from her son did not work. For all Jessie Belle cared they might have been seated side by side on a lone hillside. She carried on a rapid banter of words with Dana in a loud voice interspersed with much laughter and interesting phrases of speech which were most amazing to Amelia, and to Grandma Whipple, a rare treat. Grandma sat in silence grimly eating her dinner while the banter was going on, biding her time.

At last there came a silence and Grandma leaned over pleasantly toward Jessie Belle, and in a good clear voice said, “Can you reach me the biscuits, Jezebel?”

Jessie Belle turned and gave her a stare.

“Oh, Grandma!” corrected the horrified Justine. “Her name is Jessie, Belle. You misunderstood me.”

“I understood perfectly, Justine. Will you please pass me the biscuits, Jezebel?”

Jessie Belle laughed and passed the biscuits.

“Why, of course I will, Grandma. What a gorgeous way to pronounce my name. I never thought of it before. Wouldn’t the girls simply shout if they heard it! I believe I’ll adopt it. It’s quite original. None of the girls have a dashing name like that. They’d call me Jez of course. I believe I will. Ella, you better start in calling me Jez at once. I mean it; I really do. I’ll write to Eve tonight and make them address my letters that way. Miss Jezebel Barbour Smith. How’ll that please you, Ella? If I stick the Barbour in it’ll be a go with you, I know. Oh, boy! I gotta name for sure now. Dana you’re to call me Jez from now on, see?”

“Jessie!” burst forth the horrified Ella Smith. “Belle, I mean,” she added hurriedly, “you really are the limit! I hope you’ll all excuse her.” She cast a deprecating glance around the table, “Jessie Belle’s a great joker. That’s why she calls me Ella. We’re always such good chums, you know,” she finished lamely.

“Yes, we are not!” chimed in Jessie Belle like a chant. Lifting daintily manicured fingers tinted and polished to the last degree and several times beringed, she blew a most offensive little kiss in her mother’s direction, with an after twist like the curve of a tennis ball in a good, skillful cut that drifted it over to Dana’s direction where it turned up having lost its offense.

Amelia fairly snorted and was sure she heard Grandma cackling under her breath, though her face was perfectly impassive.

“Oh, Jessie Belle!” giggled Justine, spatting her hands together childishly. “How funny you are! That was perfectly delicious! Oh, we are going to enjoy you so much!”

Amelia suddenly shoved her chair back with a harsh grating sound and went with heavy footsteps into the kitchen for more cream. Even her back was eloquent of her feelings, but Justine was fairly launched now and carried on a byplay of fulsome flattery, while Jessie Belle happily took the lead in the conversation, addressing it mainly to Dana who was frowningly eating his dinner and saying little. He was in one of his worst moods and was out of sorts with his whole world. It was like him to feel that this giddy little girl who had caused all the trouble was being martyred by them all, and to blame his family for the way they were treating her. Dana was angry with Lynette for being hurt, angry with his grandmother for being a hornet driving in her sting wherever it pleased her, angry with his mother for being so ungracious, and angry with Justine for being a fool. He was beginning to feel that out of them all only he and Jessie Belle had good sense. He tried to soothe this uneasiness about Lynette by realizing his own superiority. That really helped a lot.

So Dana gave himself over to bantering with Jessie Belle and got what Jessie Belle herself would have called “quite a little kick” out of showing his family how well he understood her jazzy slang, and how neatly he could reply in what he knew must be to them almost an unknown tongue. He felt that they were saying, “Behold, how this our great scholar and theologian can stoop to understand the simplest foolishness and be at home in any atmosphere!” He felt that this was one of the attributes of a good minister, that he should be able to adapt himself to anyone, high or low. It was like Paul, the great preacher, who when in Rome did as the Romans—no, how was that? Oh, “all things to all men,” of course that was the quotation, and Dana swelled on to a more comfortable position with regard to himself.

Of course Lynette would have gotten over her huff by the time they reached her house and be ready. He knew Lynn. It was not like her to be rude and pettish especially when there were strangers by. She would go and be as sweet as usual, and by the time the evening was over she would smile and they would plan to go somewhere tomorrow, and it would all be forgotten. It was a little tough on Lynette, of course, his not being able to go to her house to supper when she had planned it so long beforehand. Lynette was sort of sentimental about things like that, keeping days, and things, but then, she must learn not to be childish, and really this was nothing special, just a chance invitation given some two or was it three years before when they were both little more than children. They were grown up now, and Lynn really must put away childish things and be a woman. Oh, well, he would explain this all carefully to her tomorrow, and she would see, just as she had sweetly yielded that afternoon when he had gone into details. Of course she ought to take his word for it without the details. But she would grow to that.

So Dana put his uneasiness aside and entered into Jessie Belle’s talk with a gaiety that made his Aunt Justine flush all over her pasty face with an elderly pleasure and cast a furtive, triumphant glance in Amelia’s direction; and made Amelia set the coffee cups down in their saucers with a sharp little click when she handed them around, and shut her lips hard, and resolve to invite Lynette over to spend the afternoon and take dinner the very next day. Let Lynette come and fight this battle; she herself was unfitted to cope with this hateful little painted creature, but Lynette could. She would go over wholesale to Lynette. What a fool she had been to think Lynette wasn’t good enough for Dana. Why, she hadn’t ever known there
were
fools of girls in the world like this one!

Grandma Whipple sat and ate her biscuits, bite by bite, buttering them thoroughly and thoughtfully with her palsied hand, and sometimes lifting a knowing eye in which crouched a wicked little twinkle, to glance furtively ‘round the table. But she said no more. Only Amelia fancied she heard a breath of cackling laughter now and then from the grim lips as the talk went on.

It developed at length from Jessie Belle’s banter that Dana and she were going to a picture that evening, and Justine lifted her large, limpid eyes to Dana’s face and said in her most Bostonian accent, “How lovely of you Dana, deah! So thoughtful!”

Dana wanted to slap her.

Dana would have liked to slap Jessie Belle also. Why didn’t she know enough to keep quiet about things? He must make her understand that it wasn’t wise to let his family know everything if she wanted to have a comfortable time. Now they would raise the roof at his going off to a picture show. His mother and grandmother disapproved of the movies. They had read a great deal against them in their church paper. They thought Grandfather Whipple would not have gone to them if he had been living. Now there would be a family row! Dana hated family rows. He avoided them on every possible occasion. If he could not avoid them he faced about and made a worse one on his own account which stopped the first one instantly. He really could make a pretty bad row all by himself when he tried. But one didn’t wish to do that when there were strangers by if it could be avoided. He watched his mother anxiously under his lashes. Dana’s lashes were very long and black. They swept low when he arranged them for ambush, giving him an aspect of a formidable personage who was not to be lightly approached.

But Dana’s mother was not afraid of him tonight.

“Isn’t Lynette going?” she asked sharply, speaking for the first time since she had ordered him into his seat.

Dana lifted reproachful eyes and answered haughtily.

“Certainly, Mother. We’re going up for her at once. I told her to be ready at seven.”