“He would!” said Mrs. Brooke, with a tragic look in her eyes and quite as if she were thinking out loud without intention.
“Mother, he didn’t used to be conceited,” said Lynette on quick defense. “I don’t think he really is now. He was only telling me!”
“And what are you?” said her mother. “Someone to adore him and to humbly wait upon his will, to be an ornament to his life and to do his will and glorify his career!” Her voice was almost hard as she uttered the words, and her eyes were out of the window on the fast hurrying fields and woods they were passing.
“Oh, Mother!” cried Lynette in distress. “Did you always feel that way about Dana? Then I am doing wrong; I am being disloyal to him to talk about this to you.” There were almost tears in her eyes.
“No,” said her mother, “don’t imagine I am against Dana. In a way I have been as fond of him as you have, but I have always seen shadows of these things in him; but I have sometimes been deeply troubled that I allowed such an early intimacy between you before either of you had really formed your characters, or before your judgment was mature. And now if Dana is any of these things we must know it before it is too late and do something about it.”
“Do something about it?” asked Lynette in dazed alarm. “What could we do? What do you mean? I couldn’t do anything against Dana. Mother, I love Dana.”
“Yes, I suppose you do, Lynnie, at least you think you do. But if Dana didn’t fully love you, at least more than himself, more than his own career, why you would be the most miserable person on earth when you found it out, and I for one don’t want to give you to him until I am sure about it.”
“Oh, Mother, there is nothing like that,” said Lynette, eagerly trying to defend him now. “Why, Mother—” and her cheeks flushed softly, “he was—very loving.”
“Oh, those things! Yes,” said Mrs. Brooke almost impatiently. “Lynnie, don’t you know you are a beautiful girl? He would love you that way of course. I never questioned it. You can hold your head up with the prettiest girls in the world, even if you haven’t bobbed your hair. And I’m not saying that because I’m your mother either. Other people have said it to me about you, people of the world who have seen much beauty and know. And the most beautiful part about it is that you don’t seem to know it yourself. I’ve never talked this way to you before, and it isn’t likely I will again because I don’t believe in making much of earthly beauty. But it’s time you understood that the good looks that God has given you have a certain kind of worldly drawing power, and you must not overestimate the worth of the love people give you because of your beautiful face and perfect body. Maybe I ought to have told you this before. The world is especially full of people today who live in the flesh, and every girl ought to understand that and use her judgment accordingly, not suspiciously of course, but wisely, unprejudicedly, not letting the things of the flesh have undue weight. Those things of course count for something, but we must not let anything get out of proportion in our scheme of life. Lynnie, the things of the flesh are only one-third of our earthly being. They must have their due proportion, but they must never get the ascendancy. They must be considered, of course, and a marriage without physical attraction is not likely to be a happy one, but it is not all. If Dana merely loves you for your beauty, because he loves to look at you and touch you, where will his love be when you are old and your beauty is gone, or when you are wasted with sickness perhaps? No, child, you can’t judge whether he loves you just from that. There has got to be an agreement of the mind and spirit, too, or there will be trouble. And from what you have said, I’m afraid that both his mind and spirit are finding disagreements in your mind and spirit. Isn’t that what you mean, child?”
Lynette was looking with troubled eyes from the window and did not answer at once.
“Now, Lynnie dear,” went on her mother, earnestly, “I can’t bear to seem to be raking over your heart. You must decide this matter for yourself. But I can’t help feeling that if Dana has the real thing in his heart for you he will come down to New York on the next train and talk it over with you, and all the troubles can be straightened out. And if he hasn’t—well, you want to know it, don’t you dear, before things go any further?”
Lynette, with her eyes full of unshed tears, nodded. Her voice was too full of tears to let her speak. She only held her lips from trembling by main force.
Anxiously, her mother leaned and spoke in a low, sweet voice, “Little girl, you know this isn’t all up to you. It’s God’s plan, whatever it is that is coming to you, and if you yield yourself fully to Him, He will lead you into the light, and—yes, into the brightness, too, in His own good time. You believe that, don’t you, Lynnie?”
“Yes, Mother,” smiled the girl through her tears. “You taught me to believe that when I was a very little girl, and it has helped me through a lot of hard places already. It seems as if this one is the hardest that ever has come, but I’m game, Mother! I want God to do what He wants with my life. I know it’s the only possible way of happiness, even though it does look black.”
She smiled again, and her mother squeezed her hand and said with a tremble in her own voice, “Bless you, darling child! There never was such a girl as you are. I’m positive of that! Elim would say you are a good little sport, and he’s about right. I’m not sure but your grandmother would express it in those very words, too, if she were here.” And they both broke into a ripple of soft laughter over the memory of the dear little fragile sport of a grandmother jauntily saying she was about to have “the time of her life” while they were gone.
The laughter broke the solemnity of the occasion somewhat and gave Lynette control of herself once more.
“Now, Lynnie,” said her mother, “it may be that you have a hard way ahead of you, but it will end in brightness if you keep your trust. So don’t be downhearted. If Dana really loves you better than himself it’s bound to come out. Your being away from him for a little while isn’t going to hurt it a particle. You know it may be that it will do him a lot of good to be unhappy for a while. Oh, yes, he’ll be unhappy if he really loves you, even if he does have that little flapper child to go around with. No, don’t tell me you think maybe you ought to stay home and protect him from her and save him from himself. He’s not a child in leading strings, and you can’t hold him in your lap all your life. He’s got to meet other flappers beside this one, probably has, and if he has the Lord in his heart and the real thing in his character they aren’t going to hurt him. He isn’t fit to be your husband unless he can stand a few tests. You’ve stood many of them for him, and his soul must be as true as yours or there’ll be disaster sure. So put away your burdens and tears, darling girl, and bring out your smiles. You’ve put yourself in the Lord’s keeping, well, then trust Him and await His leading. If He sends Dana down after you, and you feel the Lord, not Dana, the Lord, mind you, is wanting you to stay, then you go back home with Dana and be happy all summer. But if the Lord says go to Europe a while and wait till He is ready to reveal the way ahead to you, why then you go to Europe and be happy, knowing that you are in the Lord’s hands, and be of good cheer. Now, do you know, we’re almost to New York? Wasn’t that Yonkers we just passed? Get down the bags and straighten your hat and don’t let even yourself suspect for this day at least, that you are afraid you ought not to have come. You’ll be led. God has promised!”
Lynette leaned forward and took her mother’s hand and pressed it against her hot eyelids, touching her lips to it tenderly and murmuring softly, “You’re the most wonderful little mother that any girl ever had!”
Chapter 13
With small show of courtesy, Dana Whipple landed Jessie Belle at home, shot his car into the garage, and strode up the road to the Brooke home. His eyes were on the ground as he went, as always when he was thinking deeply. He was trying to plan just how to impress Lynette with the feeling that he was very deeply and gravely offended at what she had done the night before, and in fact at her whole attitude t
oward him since his return.
She must be made to see that she had deprived herself of many interesting items of his career since they had last seen each other that he would most certainly have informed her about fully if she had not shown such an attitude of questioning, answering back, almost seeming to poke fun at what he was saying. Really sacred things, too, like the remark she made about teaching the heathen about sin. As if even heathen didn’t know there was sin in the world without having to waste precious time talking about it! Oh, it was all wrong allowing Lynn to go to that fool college. He ought to have put his foot down earlier in the game. Her people would have taken his advice. Lynn would have managed it if he had insisted. What right had a man to insist upon ruling his family after he was gone from the earth? What right had Lynn’s father to leave an embargo on going to any college she chose? The world changed and progressed and Lynn’s father had not been very far-seeing not to realize that the little old college he thought so much of in his younger days would have become a back number by the time his daughter was ready to get her education.
Well, the damage had been done now, and it was his place to repair it. He would have to be as patient as he could, for she had revealed a certain amount of bullheadedness yesterday which was very annoying, very different from the sweet, yielding little Lynn of high-school days who thought everything he said was law and gospel, and who looked to him to explain difficult problems.
And here was he at home now from one of the most renowned seats of learning in the country, in the whole world perhaps, and fresh from the heart of theological learning and research; and here was she, a little untaught child, who had been under ignorant, fanatical teachers. Probably most of them women—old maids—who had read mistaken writers of centuries past and still believed that Genesis was to be taken literally from cover to cover; still believed there was a whale big enough to have swallowed Jonah, and wise enough to bring him up and land him at the right port at the right moment. Here was Lynn, chattering of theological questions, talking of sin and the devil as if he were a person, and presuming to hold her wisdom on a par with his. It was ridiculous. It was heartrending! To think he had been trusting her to grow into the sweet, pliable thing a woman should be, with a broad mind and strong spirit, and an unlimited faith in her husband’s judgment; and here this ridiculous antique of a college had stepped in and warped her mind and judgment and put her through some hardening process that was setting her into narrow grooves. But he would put a stop to all that. After he had broken through the false veneer of ancient ideas, he would mellow her and mold her to please himself, and she would be a splendid wife. Yes, she would be one to grace any position no matter how much in the public eye she might be placed.
As he turned in at the Brooke hedge he was already dreaming of honors that would be thrust upon him, of lectures he would be asked to give here and there, of noble pulpits he would be asked to fill, of cornerstones he would have to lay and commencement addresses he would make, of high offices in his denomination to which he would be elected. And Lynette as his wife would be a great lady, chosen for president of this club and that, asked to be a patroness for charitable affairs, heading the denominational gatherings of women as a matter of course, gracing his home, and even gaining a reputation herself for her small and select social affairs. Of course it was absolutely necessary, however, that she get rid of some of her narrow-mindedness if she were to rise in such a broad and phenomenal way to be a lady of influence and take New York by storm.
All this Dana planned between the entrance to the hedge and the front door of the house. Then he lifted up his handsome head and looked around him—and the door was shut!
Late afternoon of a warm spring day and the front door of the Brooke house closed! Unprecedented occurrence! It had always stood open afternoons in summer. What had happened? Was there intention in its closing?
A further examination proved that the door was not only shut but locked. Had they all gone away? But no, Grandmother Rutherford scarcely ever left the house nowadays except to go to church occasionally when some neighbor stopped in a car to take her. There must be someone at home.
He rang the bell, and it echoed through the house in an empty way that almost startled him. He knocked also to make sure, and the hollow sound of empty hall struck annoyingly on his already rasped nerves. While he waited, his excited mind suddenly flashed him back to the scene in the woods, Jessie Belle asking him to kiss her, a hot fire of mingled excitement and disgust flashing through him, and Elim—Had Elim been there then? Had Elim seen it all? Just what had he done anyway? Had he really kissed Jessie Belle? Bah! Only a child of course, but bah! Why had he done it?
His cheek burned hot with the memory. It must be the wind in his face all day that made his face so hot. The blood was surging into his head, too. It was really a hot day.
He took off his hat, mopped his forehead impatiently, and rang the bell again, a long, intermittent, impertinent ring, and followed it by another knock loud enough to waken the seven sleepers.
It must be that he was nervous. Those last few weeks, of course, had been strenuous. He ought to get away for a little and take a vacation. Say a run up to Maine, or out to the Pacific Coast, or at least to the seashore. Well, after he got this matter of Lynette fixed up and set her a task of reading to occupy her time he would see about it. Perhaps Grandmother Whipple would come across with the necessary cash if he presented the matter to her in a diplomatic manner.
He put an impatient finger on the bell once more, but just then he heard the key turn in the lock, in a slow grinding way, as if it were an effort; the door opened half hesitantly, and there stood Grandmother Rutherford, a little flustered from hurrying, a trifle excited at the thought of who it might be ringing the bell so insistently.
“Oh!” she said in a relieved tone, and then, “Oh!” with a trifle more of dignity. Then with perfect control and sweetness, “Why, Dana, is that you? I haven’t seen you since you came home. Come in. I hope you haven’t had to wait long. You see, I was down in the cellar looking for a mousetrap. We found a mouse in the tin closet. Elim said we’d have to get a new one, but I knew his mother had put the old one away down in the cellar, and I had just found it when I heard your ring.”
The old lady had succeeded by this time in unfastening the hook of the screen door with which she had doubly barricaded herself.
“You see, I’m alone,” she explained as Dana stepped in, hat in hand, and lifted his eyes to look for Lynette, impatient to begin her reconstruction.
“Alone?” he said surprised. “Alone!” he added in annoyance. Now he would have to wait.
“Yes, but please don’t tell Elim. He thought Mrs. Pettingill was going to stay till five o’clock or he wouldn’t have gone off and left me. It’s silly of course for them to feel that way, and Mrs. Pettingill had said she would stay, so Elim thought I would be all right. But her husband came back sooner than she had expected and stopped here for her, and I just told her not to mind, I was perfectly all right, and you know Sam Pettingill never can bear to be crossed in anything. I knew he’d be cross if she didn’t go right that minute. But it’s very silly of course that I can’t stay alone in broad daylight. I do feel better of course when the door is locked and then nobody can come in on me unaware and startle me, but really I’m as spry as I ever was and can perfectly well stay alone.”
“But why are you alone?” asked Dana as if it were some fault of her own for which she were accountable to him. “Where is Lynn? Where is Mrs. Brooke? Gone visiting?”
“Come and sit down,” said Grandmother, motioning her hand toward the dining room with her stately little formal gesture that was so characteristic of her. “No need to stand up and talk, and really I don’t know but I am tired a little after poking around down in the cellar. There, I’ve got a cobweb on my sleeve, too, haven’t I?
“Come in and sit down and I’ll tell you all about it. It’s nice to see you again and have a little talk. You never did mind tal
king to old ladies, you know. And wait, suppose I get you a piece of Lynnie’s birthday cake. You always liked cake, and you didn’t get any yet, did you? It’s especially nice this time. Too bad you couldn’t get over to Lynnie’s party last night, but of course I suppose you couldn’t help it!”
“Birthday cake!” said Dana stupidly, staring at the old lady. “Birthday cake!”
“Yes,” said the old lady sweetly. “It was the nicest one Mary has made for years. You see, Lynnie was especially anxious to have it the best birthday party she has ever had, because now she is through with school. And it was. Too bad you had to miss it, but of course—Well, they had the cunningest little ice creams. Flowers and peaches and pears and apples all made in cream, and they were so lifelike. My what wonderful things they do nowadays, don’t they? To think of making the ice cream into pictures. Too bad it didn’t keep. We had some leftover, but Elim finished it all at noon today, and it was pretty soft then. I didn’t care for it myself.”
All the time the old lady was busy getting out a sprigged china plate from the latticed corner cupboard, getting a silver knife from the ancient sideboard drawer, getting out the big half a cake from the closet in the opposite corner, and cutting a generous slice of Lynette’s birthday cake. Then hurrying out to the little refrigerator porch she returned with a glass of creamy milk, talking all the while. Dana stood and stared at her.