Blue Ruin (16 page)

“An unspeakable child!” He repeated with another forced, embarrassed laugh.

But she answered in a low, meaningful tone that held a startling amount of menace for his previously satisfied soul.

“You know I am not a child, Dana! You knew it when you kissed me!”

The moment was fraught with intensity. The perspiration suddenly sprang in little beads to Dana’s forehead, and he grew white to the lips, because there was deeper challenge now in the girl who stood there in her smoky blue dress with the afternoon sunshine drifting down upon her black bobbed wave, her cream and rose complexion, her lovely impish eyes, her beckoning carmine lips. And then, she lifted her slim white arms and held them out, her head on one side, her eyes daring him to come and kiss her again. She knew she was lovely; she even let the wickedness show like a charm of jewels in her eyes.

’twas such a little thing that brought him to his senses! The snapping of a twig behind him. He had not stirred—not yet. Had the God of his grandfather sent an angel to protect him? He froze into sudden attention.

Jessie Belle, quick to catch a changing mood, flashed out her white hands, as if that was all she had meant in the first place, almost as if it had been a continuous movement, caught Dana’s hands and whirled him off his balance into a circle.

“Come, let’s dance!” she said. “I’m dying to dance. Let’s do the Charleston. Don’t you know how, you great big nice dummy? Well, follow me, just let yourself go—I’ll guide you—”

But Jessie Belle had overdone her part. Dana’s dignity was at stake. Never in his life had he allowed himself to be made ridiculous. And—there was that snapped twig.

He wrenched himself free and faced about, still struggling with various emotions, and there, standing imperturbable in the entrance of the wooded amphitheatre, his cap on the back of his head, his hair on end, his face smudged, his fishing rod over his shoulder, a string of fish in one hand, and an inscrutable look in his dark, smoldering eyes, stood Elim Brooke.

The color rolled up over Dana’s pale, patrician features, and fury blazed forth in his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. What was there to say? What could he say? How could he explain the situation without making it worse? He might tell Elim what he thought of him for spying on his actions, for being where he obviously was not wanted. But the woods were free, and why should Elim not come to that particular haunt if he chose? As a matter of fact it was Elim who had originally led Dana and Lynette to this lovely spot, for just below the big rock, reached by a circuitous and somewhat precipitous path, there was a point where one could drop a silent hook down into the cool, shadowed depths of the creek and be pretty sure of getting a wily fish of no mean parts, if one knew how. There really was nothing to say to Elim on that score when he scanned the subject hastily.

And somehow Elim seemed to have grown and aged suddenly. He seemed to be grave and dignified, and to have attained a point of vantage which by right belonged to Dana. It galled him unbearably. He hated Elim with a new and savage quality which should have given him new light on himself.

Elim continued to stand there silently holding Dana with the power of his scornful boy’s glance.

Jessie Belle, for the instant, was silent, startled, staring at the intruder belligerently, puzzled to understand why a mere boy’s arrival had caused such a reaction in her companion.

“Oh!” said Elim at last, with a contempt in his voice that was beyond description. “It’s
you
, is it, Dana? I—thought it was a couppla bums!”

But with the first word Dana’s composure returned. He straightened his collar with a laugh, brushed a leaf from the sleeve of his immaculate coat, stooped and brushed more dust from the leg of his trousers, and arose to the occasion grandly.

“My soul! Elim! Is that you? I’m glad you’ve come. I’ve got a crazy child here that wants to dance, and she took me by surprise and whirled me off my balance. I’m getting too old and stiff to play games with children. Come on in and I’ll introduce you. She’s about your age, and you can play around together. Jessie Belle, this is—”

But Elim cast a withering glance at Jessie Belle, so full of disgust and scorn that he might as well have spit upon her, and advanced with a shrug into the shadowy arena, his back toward Jessie Belle, his eyes once more upon Dana.

“Thanks awfully, old man, but she’s not my type. I like ‘em real, not made-up! Besides, I think too much of my mother! What’s the matter with keepin’ it up yerself? You were takin’ to it fine. Shake a nasty foot, dontcha? I didn’t know they taught the Charleston at seminary. Must be great. Come on Spud, it’s gettin’ late. We gotta get those fish home fer supper.”

Spud Larkin appeared grinning in the offing, a tall boy with a freckled countenance and fire-red hair. He crossed the arena like a shadow and dropped down behind the rock after Elim as silently as an Indian. A sudden portentous stillness drifted into the quiet retreat.

It seemed to Dana that life had suddenly gone upside down and fastened him in a situation impossible for a Whipple to tolerate. In swift procession the forces which had gone to make up his life circled round him, like stark, horrified ghosts, lifting hand of holy horror at the position he had allowed himself to assume before the world, for that it would presently be broadcasted to the world with those two boys aware of it, he did not doubt. There were the shades of all the Whipples past, his grandfather and the great preacher in the lead, his father close behind, his tyrannical grandmother, his mother, Aunt Justine, and Lynette, with her white face and sad eyes as he had seen her last standing on the porch in the sunset. Lynette’s mother! Lynette’s patrician grandmother! The whole gossiping, praying, prideful village! Yes, and further than that. The theological seminary! All the professors, and his fellow students whom he had so carefully and at such odds subdued to his allegiance. The church at large who had him in view as a promising leader of things religious. The particular congregation upon which his immediate hopes of the future were pinned.

They circled around him in quick, questioning groups to his excited imagination and insisted upon his righting the situation at the instant before it became forever too late.

There were those two unspeakable devils down behind that stone, waiting undoubtedly, listening.

And how long had they been there before he discovered them?

Cold chills crept down his spine. Cold beads of perspiration broke out upon his forehead. His throat grew hot and dry. His eyes seemed to be balls of fire. He felt as if he were in an airplane high in a storm that had taken to diving into space of its own volition, and the engine had suddenly gone dead. He must do something at once or his great reputation would crash to the ground in utter destruction.

Presence of mind! Concentration! What were those things they taught in the seminary? He must right himself at once.

Clearing his throat and assuming a cheerful attitude, he took out his watch dramatically.

“Great Scott! Jessie Belle, do you know what time it is, child?” he said in tone of declamation, audible he was sure even down to the fish in the cool pool below. “We’ve got to get right back. I must get off a telegram to one of my professors before six o’clock or I may lose a chance to preach in one of the best vacant churches in the East. Come on, pick up your duds and let’s get to the car. We’ve wasted time enough playing games.”

“What’s eating you, Dana Whipple?” said an arrogant Jessie Belle, flashing her eyes and setting her painted lips in an ugly red gash as if she might have been Jezebel herself. “Aren’t you going down and fight those dirty kids for what they said about me? I won’t stand for being treated like that. No gentleman would stand for it.”

“Nonsense, Jessie Belle, they’re only a pair of ignorant kids. Don’t be a fool. Come, you’re only a child yourself. I’ve got to get back home. I have an engagement. I had no idea it was getting so late.”

An evil look came into Jessie Belle’s belashed eyes.

“You’re a coward!” she said in the sophisticated tone of a girl of the slums. It seemed to transform her into a menace.

But Dana was intent upon the part he was acting, upon his well-modulated laugh and his distinctly pitched voice, a voice that could reach so easily to the people way back in the last seat under the galleries, and was even now echoing over the rock and down to the fishing hole below.

“Thank you, Jessie Belle,” he laughed lazily. “If compliments are being handed out I might call you several degrees of a child.”

“You’re afraid!” hissed Jessie Belle. “You’re afraid of those boys!”

“Have it your own way,” orated Dana Whipple wearily. “I’m going home. If you don’t get down to the car at once you’ll have to walk, for I’ve got to send that telegram.”

After that the woods were silent, save for the snapping of a twig under a quick step now and then, a bird’s note high in the branches, the soft plink of a pebble sliding into the water.

Dana had gone with great strides down to the car without looking back. He had not even seen Jessie Belle’s scorn of him. His very back was indignant as he disappeared between the branches. She stood sulkily, lowering, her wrath smoldering. He would come back! Of course he would come back. And she would
make
him go down and pitch those despicable boys into the water. That first one had been awfully good looking. Jessie Belle never could tolerate indifference in a good-looking man or boy. He must be punished and be made to take notice. This Elim, whoever he was, should be humbled till he groveled at her feet. And then perhaps she might take notice of him, for he
was
good looking. But it was up to Dana to do the humbling. Dana had been yellow. Dana had been afraid of him. She would humble Dana, too. She had almost had him where she wanted him, and then that horrid boy had come. That was where the long-faced part of the theological student came in probably. He was a slave to his orders. He was afraid to be caught. But she could manage him. He would come back.

But Dana did not come back.

The spirit of the orthodox Whipples had been outraged. Dana was himself again. And presently she heard the snorting, the chug-chugging of the motor. Dana couldn’t be going to leave her here? It wasn’t thinkable! With those unspeakable, loathsome boys!

She cast a hurried, frightened eye about on the serene, cool shadows of the green retreat that suddenly seemed so empty, so alone. Then she picked up her feet and ran in a panic. She ran until the car was in sight, and then she stopped and picked a handful of ferns, in full sight of the unseeing Dana she picked them, carefully, deliberately and emerged slowly, leisurely, as if she had been following him all the time. She presented a charming study in blues and greens, with all the air of a pretty peacock, stepping along; stately, unhurried, gorgeous, unaware of her escort’s cold fury.

All the way back to town Dana was silent, furious, haughty, his mood growing more and more unpleasant.

But Jessie Belle was apparently still unaware of his lack of sympathy. She began to sing, little trills at first, runs up and down the scale, a high note or two of an opera—which she had not been allowed to study yet because it was too difficult for her present development—a quaint little folk melody, a sad song, a bad song or two, with a sidewise, coy glance to see what effect it was having.

It only made Dana more cold and severe. His clerical Whipple profile was turned well away from her vision. As they passed the Brooke house he turned his head and searched it frowningly, forgetting, apparently, that she was along. It occurred to him that this whole trouble was Lynette’s fault anyhow—began yesterday afternoon—Lynette’s insisting he must come to her house to supper—so childish. Yes, it was all Lynette’s fault, and Lynette had got to learn! He would go right over there and attend to it, just as soon as he had safely landed this unspeakable kid that he had been fool enough to try to show a good time to. Never again! It was the last time for him! He would go over and have it out with Lynette, and when she was sufficiently humble, he would stay to dinner, and then afterward perhaps he would have a chance to tell her all about the church that wanted to hear him preach and paid such a high salary and had complimented him so on his eloquence. His pride had been suffering severely for having had to keep this news from her so long. And it was all Lynette’s fault.

Chapter 12

T
o Lynette’s surprise Mrs. Brooke had taken seats in the parlor car. It was an expense that they usually felt they could easily forego, for the common cars were not apt to be overcrowded at that point on the line, and it was only four hours’ ride. Why waste the money?

“But we’re going to enjoy ourselves today, Lynnie,” said her mother with a wistful smile, and Lynette felt the tears in her throat again as she saw the look in her mother’s eyes. This ride was to be all the vacation her mother would have for many a long day. She must not break down. She must not let her mother see how almost frightened she was at what she seemed to be doing. She must just take it calmly and make her mother have a happy time.

And after all, perhaps it was only a day’s pleasant trip. Perhaps tonight or tomorrow night she would come back with her mother to the hometown and the summer would go on as it had been planned. It seemed absurd, now she was really on the way, that it could be possible she was going away with so little preparation for so long, so far. Well, perhaps she wasn’t. After all she had not fully promised. She had only agreed to come down and talk it over and let them persuade her to go if they could. She had held a reservation. And that reservation was all that saved her from pulling back at the last minute as they were stepping into the train, and saying, “No, Mother, I can’t go! I simply can’t! It isn’t right, and, anyway, I
won’t!”

But she could go back still, if she would. She wasn’t out of the country. The decision was yet ahead of her.

How dear Elim looked as he lounged easily on the platform waving them out of sight with a grin, so casually. Just as if they were coming back to dinner. Well, perhaps—a word, a telegram—Ah! Would Elim remember to deliver her letter at once? A frantic smothering sensation crowded in her throat. Oh, suppose he should forget! Suppose Dana didn’t find out that she was going until she was gone! The boat out on the ocean, plowing unfathomable distances between them, that days and months would have to bridge with memories, and with bitterness, till she could come back and they could talk together and it could all be explained. Why,
why
had she trusted to Elim? Why had she not sent for Dana and told him plainly what she was going to do and let him have a chance to stop her if he wanted to?