Blue Ruin (7 page)

Her eyes snapped and she lifted her tired head fiercely from the windowpane, her strength returning with her anger, the tears which but the moment before had been blinding her scorching dry with the heat of her indignation. No, she would never go to live with Dana as a dependent. But oh, if she could just get away from Justine! Justine was the thorn in her flesh which pricked and scratched continually. Oh, life, life, life! What a farce it was! Trouble everywhere one looked. No comfort even in one’s own children. The minute you got them raised they turned away from you.

And now here was this other girl coming upon the scene! No telling what complications this might bring about. There might be worse things in life than even to have Lynette as a daughter-in-law, dishpans and all! Strange Grandma didn’t think of that. But then she did not know the girl was grown up. That was all a piece of Justine’s slyness. It would serve Grandma right if the girl made trouble.

Grimly, Amelia went back to her cooking, her lips set, her heart heavy. The dinner had to be got whatever came, and one couldn’t live always, that was some comfort. Though heaven would have to be pretty nice to make up for all one went through here.

Amelia had an inherited belief in a life hereafter, not an active one, which she kept put away in her thoughts somewhere against the day of her departure from this life. It could not be said to be a bright and shining hope. It was merely a last vague resort. It seemed necessary for the mother of a prospective minister of the Gospel to have this much. It wouldn’t be decent not to. But it could not be said to be a comfort and stay to her soul.

Then suddenly the peas began to boil dry, it was time for the biscuits to go into the oven, the potatoes must be mashed, and the gravy made. What difference did it make whether life was worth living or not? The dinner must be brought to its usual perfect climax. Justine was coming down the front stairs. In a moment more she would dash into the kitchen with her obnoxious offers of help again, and she would see that Amelia had been crying.

Amelia seized the potato pot and poured the potatoes hastily through the colander. The rising steam would hide her eyes. Justine would think it was the steam that made her eyes red. Justine wasn’t as keen as Grandma. Think of Grandma noticing that little bit of powder!

Amelia dashed her hand hastily over her eyes again to make sure there were no telltale drops on her lashes. Was that Dana’s car turning in at the drive?

Now, what would that other girl be like? Everything depended upon that.

Chapter 5

T
he train was within a mile of the station, and Ella Smith and her daughter were preparing to leave it.

“We’re going through into the parlor car and get out from there,” announced the daughter as if she were conductor of the expedition.

“No,” said the mother, “that’s silly. I don’t like to walk in a moving train.”

“Well, you’re going to walk in this one, Ella,” said the daughter impudently. “It’s bad enough to have to ride in a common car without having people see you did it. Come on Ella, pick up your things. It’s time we were getting started.”

“Now, look here, Jessie, that’s another thing I’ve been going to speak to you about. You’ve simply got to stop calling me Ella. It’s disrespectful, and I won’t have it. It was all right at home just for fun, where everybody knew us, but now we’re going among strangers, and Miss Whipple would be horrified. I want you to promise me, Jessie—”

“Promise nothing!” said the daughter. “It’s none of her business what I call my mother. If she’s such an antiquated Jane that she doesn’t know everybody is doing it now it’s time she learned. It’s you that have got to cut calling me Jessie. I won’t have it, do you hear? You promised you wouldn’t do it another time. And you’ve called me Jessie half a dozen times in the last five minutes. I’m Jessie Belle from now on, and you’re Ella. Get me? It won’t take me two minutes to jump back on this train and go to New York or some other place I like if you go to getting funny. I may stay in this dump if everything goes right for a while but I certainly won’t if it don’t. Get that? I won’t stick around a week even if you call me Jessie once. I’m not going to arrive there and be tagged with that old-fashioned name. It’s Jessie Belle or nothing.”

“Well Jessie—I mean, Jessie Belle—it’s awfully hard to remember, Jessie, when I’ve called you that all your life, but—Jessie Belle, I’ll call you Jessie Belle if you will stop calling me Ella. It really isn’t seemly, Jessie—I mean Jessie Belle—”

“Aw, cut that! It’s Ella or nothing. I won’t stick around at all and go around saying ‘Momma’ the way you want me to. It simply isn’t being done. If you can’t be a good sport like an up-to-date mother I’ll make my own life. I’ve told you that before. And you’ve got to improve on that Jessie business or you won’t find me when the train moves on at all. You get in a Jessie twice for every time you say it right. You’ve got to
think
of me as Jessie Belle. Say it over and over to yourself while we’re getting off and then you’ll be able to manage it naturally. I thought I had you trained. Come, Ella, the train’s slowing down. You take that old bag, and I’ll take the new one. Get a hustle on. Follow me, and don’t you dare let that young man know we rode in the common car.”

“Oh, but, Jessie Belle,” said Ella Smith dubiously, rising and trying to pull down the heavy bag from the rack overhead.

“That’s the stuff, Ella, keep her up!” said Jessie Belle swinging jauntily up the aisle with the new bag and boldly slamming the door open. “Get through this door and into the parlor car quick before anybody sees us. We’re going clear through and get off the other end. See? And we’re going to give the porter our bags to carry. I’ve got a quarter all ready to give him. Don’t you make any fuss now.”

“But Jessie—Jessie Belle—why waste a whole quarter for that? It’s only a minute or two more, and we can just as well carry them ourselves. The young man will likely take them for us. Here, give me yours if it’s heavy. I can manage them both.”

“For mercy’s sake, Ella, don’t you see it means everything to make a good impression at the start? Do you want him to
see
we had to carry our own baggage? Do you want him to
know
you’re so hard up you couldn’t even spare a quarter for the porter?”

“But Jessie! Belle! Wouldn’t a dime do well enough? I don’t know where we’re going to get any more money after this is gone.”

“Hush, Ella, people will hear you. Hurry. The train is stopping! Let me manage this business. You’re a back number. One would think you’d lived in the country all your life instead of New York. Buck up now and get down to the other door quick! You don’t want to get carried on do you?”

Ella Smith came puffing laboriously down the aisle after her daughter, bowling from one parlor chair to the next with the regular spasmodic lurches, apologizing to first one side and then another, finally bringing up with an elaborate apology to an empty chair at the end of the line, and drawn up with a jerk by Jessie Belle’s restraining hand.

“Cut it, Ella! You’ve lost your head!”

“But Jessie,” gasped the excited mother, “I mean Belle, we weren’t brought up to deceive. All this about your name—and pretending we’ve been traveling in the parlor car! Jessie! Belle! I don’t think it is really right to change your name this way. You weren’t baptized Belle, you were baptized Barbour. Jessie Barbour Smith! I don’t feel we ought to go on with this. Your father would—”

“Cut it, Ella. Dad’s dead and he’s nothing to say about it, and I
prefer
Belle to Barbour. Besides, you burned your bridges behind you when you wrote Miss Whipple my name was Jessie Belle and now you’ve got to live up to it. Here we are! Now, you remember, I mean what I say. I’ll clear out if you go to Jessie-ing me. There! That must be the car just driving up. Gee! He’s good looking! Say Ella, I’m crazy about him already!”

“Now look here, Jessie! I mean Belle!” said the mother pulling at her daughter’s sleeve. “You mustn’t talk that way. That young man is engaged! You know Justine Whipple wrote me he was engaged! It isn’t decent—”

“Applesauce, Ella! What’s that to me?” trilled Jessie Belle joyously. “Just a little more exciting, that’s all, Ella. Come on! Give the porter your bag!”

Ella Smith got herself down the steps of the parlor car dubiously and stood like a nice, bewildered old hen whose one pretty chicken had suddenly become a wild duckling.

She looked around her with troubled eyes, trying to find her old friend Justine Whipple, bewildered with the new scenes, anxious and panic-stricken about the outcome of this visit. The bustle and noise of the departing train held her on the platform where she had first stepped off, and she glanced back to the fast-moving car where she had been sitting a few short moments before with a wild longing to jump on its steps and get back to her home again, only there was no home to go to anymore.

The last car swept past her. She turned to find her daughter and beheld her slim as a match in her little black satin sheath with its deep blue facings, silhouetted against a background of taxis and automobiles shaking hands most intimately with an attractive young man in a dark blue suit, his panama hat crushed carelessly on his shapely hand. With a strange foreboding she went toward them, wondering what her wild girl was going to do next. Hoping it would not end in some mortifying experience. It had been that way ever since Jessie was born—Jessie Belle, she corrected herself in her mind—she had been wondering what she would do next—what wouldn’t she do?—and feeling utterly inadequate to cope with it. She kept saying, “Oh, if her father had just lived, it wouldn’t have been this way! He knew how to control her!”

But the repetition of this happy reflection, however true it might have been, was unfortunately like beating against the wind. It had no effect whatever on Jessie Belle. She continued to go airily on her willful way.

It was Jessie Belle who had insisted upon their selling the home her father had provided for them in a little, quiet New England village and going to New York to live in a flat that she might have her voice trained. Someone, a summer visitor perhaps, had carelessly told her she had a voice and she rested not day or night after that until she got her mother to go to New York.

And now, when like that other poor soul in a far country, they had spent all and the interest they had thought was for all eternity most unexpectedly gave out because the principal had been spent, Ella Smith had appealed in a panic to her old school friend Justine Whipple. Even in their dire extremity Jessie Belle had been most trying, weeping hysterically at the idea of leaving New York, berating her mother for mismanagement, threatening to go her own way and find a job at the movies, threatening all sorts of things that had not been considered respectable in the little New England town where Ella Smith had been brought up. It was only when Justine Whipple had casually mentioned Dana that the girl had at last evinced an interest in the gushing invitation to come to the Whipple house for the summer. And here they were! And there was the young man! And what would Jessie—Jessie Belle—do next? Her mother trembled and went forward dazedly to meet him.

“This is Mrs. Smith?” asked Dana politely with his best parish-call manner.

“Yes, that’s my Ella,” chimed in the girl, “and I’m Jessie Belle. You are Dana, aren’t you? I thought so. Your aunt described you so perfectly that I should have known you if I had met you on Fifth Avenue. She said there wasn’t another like you anywhere, and I guess she was right.”

She looked at him with a flattering flutter of her dark, curly lashes and swept him a dimple from the corner of her mouth, which managed to convey a sense of deep admiration and flitted so quickly that he wondered if it had really been there or he had only imagined it. He had never made a study of dimples. He looked at her several times as they progressed to the car to see if it would come again, but Jessie Belle knew how to hold her charms in reserve.

“Is this your car? Oh, how adorable! It’s new, isn’t it? I’m crazy about that make of car. Say, you’ll teach me to drive, won’t you? I’m wild to learn. I’ve had no chance, you know, being in New York studying so hard. It really isn’t any pleasure, of course, motoring in the city, and we never had time to get out very far. I’ve been doing a lot of serious work, you know. But Dad was going to buy a car just before he died, and we somehow haven’t had the heart to get one since. Of course we’ll get one soon though. May I sit in the front with you? I’ll watch and get my first lesson. Ella, you sit back with the bags.”

She waved her hand to her mother imperiously, and Ella climbed in with deeper foreboding than ever. A car! She was afraid of automobiles, and Jessie—no Jessie Belle, she must remember that—was so headstrong. Oh dear!

Jessie Belle was rattling on, and Dana, in the intervals of avoiding traffic, was watching to see if there had really been a dimple.

“They said you were a theological student. Is that really true? I can’t imagine it. You don’t look a bit gloomy. Don’t you hate it? All those stuffy old subjects about dying and being good and all that? I should think you would have chosen something more—well—up to date, you know. People don’t believe those old things anymore. Why didn’t you learn to fly and be an explorer? That’s all the rage now. You’re much too nice looking to be wasted making long-faced prayers.”

Dana gave her an indulgent smile.

“What do you know about such things, kitten? You don’t look as if you had ever spent time even thinking about it.”

She swept him an upward, coy glance from under her gorgeous lashes, and the dimple came out and flitted back like a sprite.

“Oh, but I have,” she said coquettishly. Her highly illuminated lips pouted out like a bright red cherry, with the dimple lurking at one corner. “I thought about it a great deal after your aunt’s letter came. It seemed so perfectly awful for a perfectly good young man, a really fine peach of a fella, to throw himself away preaching to a lot of folks who never listen and don’t want to hear him anyway. I just felt sorry for you. And I thought it was going to be perfectly horrid to be here all summer long and the only man on the landscape a preacher. Oh, my soul! I couldn’t see it at all!”