Blue Ruin (24 page)

They watched them go, Justine with a smile of satisfaction and a furtive triumph flung at Amelia. Ella Smith, like a frightened hen whose duck was swimming. Amelia with a snort of baffled fury. The old lady sat by her window far into the twilight and looked out across the mountains where the blue ruin grew like smoke and laughed softly to herself, until Amelia thought she should go insane.

As Jessie Belle and Dana went down the street arm in arm, a long, fringed, brilliant shawl of magenta silk hanging over Dana’s arm, they passed Elim and his mother just coming home from the New York train in Scarlett’s old Ford. Mrs. Brooke looked out and expected to speak, but Dana did not look up nor seem to see them, and Elim whistled, pointedly, with sharp stoccato notes, “I wonder—who’s kissing her—now!”

Mrs. Brooke watched them walking away into the twilight and felt she had her answer to her prayer for guidance. She had been praying all the way home. She had not done wrong to urge Lynette to go abroad!

“Gee, Muth! I’d like to wallop that cuss!” broke forth Elim when they were almost home.

“Elim!”

“Well, I would, Muth. And don’t the Bible say it’s just as bad to wantta as to do it? Well, then, why can’t I do it? It ain’t any worse than what I have to do now, is it? And it would do Dana a whole lot of good! It would be an experience. Dana needs experience, Muth!”

“Elim, don’t talk that way! It is terrible! What has Dana been doing to stir you up so? Anything new?”

“Aw! He’s a rotten sucker! That’s all! Wait till I tell ya. You stick around till Gramma goes to bed. Ain’t any need ta worry her with it. She’s game all right, but why worry her?”

So Mary Brooke “stuck around,” and Elim told her, and after that she was doubly sure that she had been right in urging Lynette to go abroad.

But yet, she was troubled about Dana. Oughtn’t she to do something for Dana, the friend of Lynette’s childhood? Hadn’t they a responsibility toward him? It is true he had acted most indifferently toward Lynette, but perhaps there had been something to excuse him. Still, what could she do but pray for Dana? And pray she did with a heart like lead, but a faith that laid him at the foot of the cross and asked for his salvation from self and sin. She did not pray that he might be made fit for her daughter to love. She did not feel that her wisdom was able to judge whether or not that was a right prayer. It was for God who knew the end from the beginning and reads the human heart perfectly to judge that. She must be content to let the matter lie in God’s hand. And yet she prayed that Dana would be kept from utter ruin, and she prayed with a heart of love, too.

And Dana, walking the ways of what he knew was temptation, and thinking himself strong to keep from falling, strong in his own fine character, strong with the education and culture he had acquired, strong in his pride of family and church, strong in the strength of what he expected to be someday, yet went and put himself in the way of death and tried to enjoy it awhile just for the experience.

Nor was Mary Brooke’s prayer that night wholly without immediate answer, for the silver screen flashed a story before Dana’s indolent eyes that should have been a warning to him, if anything can warn a man who is so wise in his own conceit. For God can make even the wrath of man to praise Him, and that night He must have used that picture to answer that prayer and send a warning to Dana Whipple’s sleeping soul.

Grandma Whipple was not one to read her Bible much, but she asked for it that night and studied over it awhile, flipping the leaves back and forth till she found what she wanted. She got out a pencil and paper from the little stand drawer by her side and wrote with her rheumatic fingers a line or two.

Dana’s big white college sweater lay on a chair not far away. She poked at it with her crutch while Amelia was out of the room and Justine and Ella reading over in the parlor. She pinned the paper to the sweater, quite conspicuously, and hobbled over to a chair by the hall door, laying the sweater across it where Dana would be sure to see it and take it upstairs with him. Then she announced to Amelia that she was ready to go to bed, and she lay a long time under the blankets chuckling to herself at what she had done, what she was going to do perhaps, if things didn’t come out the way they ought to.

“You’re a smart woman, Amelia,” she said by way of good night, “but you haven’t enough git-up-and-git! You were real smart tonight several times, but you didn’t keep it up. If I was as smart as you I’d never let that Jezebel woman get away with what she has set out for. Better go to bed and think that over. You didn’t take my advice in time or you might have had Lynette here yet!”

After Amelia had shut Grandma’s door she went over to the paper pinned on the sweater and read what Grandma had written there, but she did not dare to unpin the paper and throw the note away. Or perhaps she thought it wiser to let it alone. Anyway, she left it there. It might have been due just to her lack of “git-up-and-git.”

The words that Grandma had written on the paper were these:

“He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.”

When Dana found it later in the evening and took it up to his room, he read and pondered over it for some time, with a frown. Now what could Grandma mean by that? For the old lady never did anything without a purpose, and that was unmistakably her writing. Was it in the nature of a threat or a promise? Dana went thoughtfully to bed and spent some wakeful hours in profitable meditation. And yet, his eyes were so blinded by his own conceit that he walked blindly back into danger the very next day.

Chapter 17

L
ynette was not left long to think her sad thoughts alone that afternoon. Dorothy came pouncing down upon her and carried her off to see the boat. Led her the lengths of the decks, up and down, through cabins and corridors until she felt lost and bewildered, but for the time her regrets and anxieties were put aside and she was just a girl, off for a good time with her cousin.

Dorothy was tall, and slim, and with pretty features and a good-looking haircut, rather boyish though it was. She was cheerful and a bit impertinent in her way, but it was such a pretty way, and she seemed so cocksure of herself that Lynette felt a sort of fascination in watching her. They had not been together for four years, except for the three days that she had spent in New York on her way home, and the fascination had not yet worn off. Dorothy was only seventeen, but she actually seemed older than Lynette, who was just twenty-one. Dorothy had assumed the position of mentor to her cousin at once.

“Now, we’re going to our stateroom and unpack,” she announced after they had made the rounds of the ship most thoroughly, located their deck chairs, and summed up the points of vantage generally.

“I haven’t much to unpack,” laughed Lynette. “I’m afraid I shall make a sorry companion for you, you bird of gorgeous plumage. I had a peep into your steamer trunk and suitcase before they went away and it certainly looked like a rainbow. I shall have to stay in the background till we get somewhere and I can get fitted out a little better.”

“Indeed you won’t, Lynnie dear,” declared the vivacious Dorothy. “I got after Cousin Marta on the telephone and made her will you all her darling dodads and sports clothes and evening dresses. She would have done it anyway if she had had time to think. She’ll never wear them again. Her sister can’t live. The doctor said so when she sent out to California, only she rallied for a while and they hoped she might live for a few years. But the telegram said she was sinking rapidly and Marta will go straight into mourning of course. When she comes out of mourning these tricks will be all out of date and she’ll have to get new things. You might as well have them as her maid; anyway, she has loads of money to buy more. Of course she’s ages older than you, but that don’t mean a thing these days, and Cousin Marta wears her skirts to the limit, so they won’t be too long for you. I’m dying to see them on you. She’s just your build and size. I know some of them will be just precious. Of course we may have to change something here or there, but that’s nothing. The stewardess will help us. And evening dresses are easy to fix. Almost anything goes it if has a back and a front and a gold rose.”

“Oh, but Dorothy! I couldn’t wear your cousin’s things. They would be much too gorgeous for me. Why, I wouldn’t have anyplace to wear them either. Remember I’m only along in the background. I’m not going among people I know. Don’t distress yourself about me. Don’t try to dress me up to fit the picture. Let me stay in the background.”

“Background nothing! You’re my cousin, and you’re going to stay so. We are going everywhere together, and you’ve got to play up. Let’s open Marta’s steamer trunk and see what she sent. I do hope she put the silver and jade one in. It’s a beauty! We’ll want that for the first night. You and I are going to dance the whole evening long and have the dandiest time! They have a wonderful orchestra on board, and the floor is peachy. There are three men I know, and I’ll let you have one of them for your special during the trip. He’s rather wild, but he has nice eyes, and he can dance like an angel.”

“Do angels dance?” asked Lynette amused, and then sobering down. “I’m sorry dear, but I don’t! You must just make up your mind that I’m an older sister, a sort of country cousin who isn’t in society and doesn’t want to be. I’m very old-fashioned, you know.”

“So’s your old man!” said Dorothy brightly. “You’re going to learn to dance! I’ll begin to teach you right now!” And she caught up her cousin and whirled her about in the tiny space beside the trunk till they both fell laughing into the berth and Lynette’s hair came tumbling down around her shoulders in a lovely golden mass.

“Oh, look at your gorgeous locks!” cried Dorothy. “Aren’t you the bee’s knees with all that top knot! I thought of growing mine but it would take so long and look so scraggy that I gave it up. I hate to be a fright while it’s growing. Get up now and try the step again. It won’t take you long to learn.”

“No, dear!” said Lynette quite firmly. “You’ll have to make up your mind that dancing is one of the things I don’t do. I don’t want to argue about it, and I’m not going to try to make you think as I do about it, but I just don’t do it. I went over that question four years ago, the first time it had ever really come to my notice as something to be decided, because as a matter of course I had never done it before. I decided that it wasn’t a good thing, not for me anyway, nor for what I have planned to do in life, and so I just settled the question once for all. I’m sorry if I disappoint you, but there are some things I can’t yield and this is one of them.”

“Oh hen!” said Dorothy disappointedly. “But you’ll get over that when you’ve been out in the world a little while. I suppose I’ll just have to wait. Mamma said you’d have ideas of your own, but you’re nice anyhow. Come on, let’s have a smoke! I’m almost ready to pass away. I haven’t smoked all the morning because Mamma kept sticking around and she makes such a fuss.”

Lynette faced about aghast. Her cousin!

“But Dorothy! You don’t smoke!”

“Sure I do! Been smoking ever since I went to boarding school. Wouldn’t be in it if I didn’t. All the girls smoke. Where’ve you been that you didn’t know that?”

“I’ve been in a place where no one does,” said Lynette with a wistful look in her eyes and a sudden yearning for the safe, sane halls of her alma mater. “But Dorothy, we might as well talk it out now as ever, and then if you don’t want to go around with me, why, that’s up to you. I don’t smoke, and I don’t believe in it! In fact I hate it! But that’s neither here nor there. If I didn’t hate it I wouldn’t do it because of what my mother and my dear little grandmother would think of me. I can’t see how you can go against your mother’s wish even if you haven’t any ideas of your own against it.”

“Oh, baloney!” said Dorothy, casting herself down upon the pillows and kicking a hat box off the foot of the berth. “You don’t have to mind your mother! That’s an antiquated theory. It’s all been shown up! Haven’t you ever found that out? Why, your father and your mother aren’t really any better than you are! They haven’t any right to say what you will do or what you won’t do just because they’ve been here longer than you have! Everybody is born free and equal, and everybody has a right to order his own life as he pleases! I please to smoke. Why should my mother interfere merely because she’s my mother? She loves me because she is in the habit of having me around of course, and I’m fond of her, but I’m not going to be hampered and hindered by her. She has no right whatever to order me round.”

“Dorothy!” said Lynette, standing up and facing her cousin, “I can’t listen to such terrible talk any longer. I’ll go out in the cabin there and sit in a chair all night, but I won’t stay here and listen to you dishonor your father and mother! Do you know what the Bible says about honoring your father and mother? Don’t you know it is one of God’s commandments?”

“Rubbish! More baloney! People don’t believe in a God anymore, and the Bible is an antiquated book! Why should I try to obey some stuffy old commands?”

“The fool hath said in his heart there is not God!”

Lynette quoted it quietly, almost without knowing she was speaking aloud, but Dorothy caught up the words.

“Oh, yes, I’m a little fool, I suppose, but don’t preach at me for pity’s sake. I’m dying for a smoke, that’s all. I’ll be all right when I have it, and I’m going to take it! If you don’t like it you can go outside,” and she sprang up and took out her cigarette case.

Lynette quietly opened the door and went out. She felt suddenly alone and old, and wondered again why she had ever thought she could come. It wasn’t a place for her. And here she was in a discussion with her cousin right off at the start! How was life going to be possible together if that was the state of the case? Had she done wrong? Should she have avoided the issue? Such had not been her training, but would that have been being wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove?

No, she couldn’t listen to Dorothy calling her mother and her Bible and her God in question! Aunt Hilda had wanted her to be an influence for good in Dorothy’s life, and surely she shouldn’t pass such things over lightly. Yet was there anything else she could have done or said? Had she been wrong in being so outspoken?