Girl to Come Home To

by Grace Livingston Hill

  So she went smiling into the house with a real glad light in her eyes, not any artificial smile either, but a smile of resting and trusting.

  But over in her own room, not many miles away, Jessica was fretting and fuming.

  For three long days she waited for her chance to get it back on this little indifferent New Yorker whom she hadn’t been able to down with the most bitter and unpleasant words she could find. She had gone each morning early to the Graeme house, telling Mother Graeme that she simply must see Rodney at once, and gotten the same answer, that he had not yet returned. And she knew no more of what was to be his orders now than she had known when Jessica was there before.

  “Well, then, you’ll have to give me his address, Mamma Graeme. I’ve simply got to ask him some questions. I’ve got an order to write an article, and I told my editor that I had a friend just returned from service, and I would get some local coloring for him, and I’ve only a few more days to get this article in, so please give me his address.”

  “But I don’t know what it is, Jessica,” said Margaret Graeme, glad in her heart that she didn’t know. “You see, the boys know that I understand I mustn’t worry if I don’t hear. I’ve been through months and months of that, you know, and so have they, and they would be sure I would wait and know that they would write as soon as they had anything definite that they had a right to tell.”

  “But they are not overseas now, you know.”

  “No, I wouldn’t know that for sure. You know, the war needs are peculiar and changeable. They might have been sent right off to the Pacific, without a chance to either telephone or write. They would feel that I would understand. But then again they may be returning tonight or tomorrow or even sometime today. They’ll come when they come,” and she smiled quietly with a faith that was used to trusting her very life to God.

  But that utter trust only made Jessica angry. “You’re the most unfeeling mother I ever saw,” she snapped, “or else you’re holding out on me for some reason.”

  “Why, no,” said Margaret Graeme, “I’m not holding out on you. I just haven’t the information you want, that’s all.”

  But Jessica had slammed away and gone over to Louella’s hotel to blame her. She was due to report to her husband either by letter or in person in three days, and as yet she hadn’t got anywhere, except to blast Diana, which though it gave her personal satisfaction, had left a great uneasiness because she couldn’t interpret aright her reaction. She had never seen a girl react to an insult as Diana had done, and with apparently no after-climax of retaliation, and she was constantly fearing what form it might take when it did come. For she was sure a girl with spirit enough to have such steady poise to walk out on an insult, head up, shoulders back, must have initiative enough to bring a real sting when she finally decided to act. So she watched and planned and tried to bully Louella into doing something drastic. She hadn’t been even able to find out whether she had driven Diana back to New York yet, or if she was still at the Sandersons.

  But at last the boys came home again, arriving on the late train Saturday night, to stay just over Sunday, they told their mother as they kissed her joyously. And from that embrace she gathered that their news was good, whatever it was. She could wait till they told her.

  The news of their arrival got around the town by way of Bonny Stewart, whose brother spent much of his time hanging around the station, especially at the time of the arrival of the late trains, hoping to pick up an extra dollar or two conveying late passengers to their homes to build up his depleted bank account.

  In due time the word got around to Jessica, by way of several of the other girls, and she lost no time in going to the Graeme house, but found them of course all gone to church.

  “The very idea!” she said to Hetty, who had informed her. “I should have supposed they would have stayed at home together if the boys are going away again. A strange kind of a mother they have that she would let them go to church and go herself when they may be going away again, perhaps never to come back.”

  “Dat’s mostly de case wif everyone,” said Hetty wisely. “When you go out an’ away you can’t say if you’ll ever come back again. But dat ain’t sayin’ you shouldn’t go right on livin’ de best you can. But dat’s how it is. If you want’s ta see dem boys, you’d best go ta church yourself.”

  Very angry at this, Jessica walked out but decided on the way to the gate that she would go to church and hold up Rodney, make him walk home with her, and show the town who had him now. So she went to church.

  She entered noisily and took a back seat, and the first sight she saw was the Graeme family all sitting together in their usual pew. Later her eyes wandered to the other side of the church, and there sat the Sandersons, with that Diana in their midst! The effrontery of her. After all she had said to her to think she would dare come to a public place and appear with Rodney’s friends. Well, she would settle that once and for all. She would get hold of Rodney before any of them and make him promise to walk home with her. He simply couldn’t say no, or get out of it in public this way.

  So while the last words of the benediction were still echoing in the air, and while the soft tones of the organ began to play for the close of service, Jessica was halfway up the aisle, marching straight to the Graeme pew and making everyone turn and stare wondering if someone had died or something strange had happened. Jessica had not been seen with the Graemes for several years, yet there she was leaning over Father Graeme and Mother Graeme, to speak most earnestly to Rodney. Well, that was something to look at and mistake!

  “Rod,” she said with her sweetest smile, recalling with her tone the days when he would always spring to do her bidding, “will you please walk home with me? I have something very important to tell you, and it won’t wait. And can you come at once, so I won’t take too much of your precious time?”

  She was waiting, still leaning over the Graemes, effectually blocking the way for them to get out into the aisle. Margaret Graeme’s heart almost skipped a beat as she heard the request made of her boy. Just how would he handle this matter? Then the assurance came back to her eyes and she knew that God was managing this affair as well as the war, and she might relax and just trust.

  But Father Graeme’s face was stern and his jaw grim. Most of his fellow Christians could tell pretty well how he felt about the matter, for well they knew that expression and didn’t care to get into any argument with him when he looked like that. Then they all looked quickly at Rodney, especially Jeremy, who was just beyond his brother at the other end of the seat, and his eyes were both stern and anxious.

  But Rodney had a calmness about him that his brother knew was not his own. Jeremy felt he had just been praying.

  Rodney gave Jessica one sharp, stern, searching glace, and then he let his lips relax, and he answered in a pleasant voice that all around could hear, “That would be quite impossible, Mrs. De Groot. Someone is waiting for me with a car, and I have to leave at once. Mother, Dad, will you kindly let me pass? I promised not to be late,” and though Jessica put on an act of trying to detain him—“But oh, Rod, this is most important! Then when can I see you? Sometime today?”—he brushed by her brusquely and went marching down the aisle, smiling at everybody but getting quite away.

  And though she did her best to follow him up for just one other word, trying to think which ugly truth she could convey briefly to fling at him, she only arrived at the church steps in time to see Rodney assisting Diana into the backseat of the Sanderson car and sitting down beside her. So, that was the way it was, was it? That girl hadn’t taken her warning, and now she was due to get her full punishment. Well, she, Jessica, would do her worst. She would go to the Sandersons’ and ask to see him. He surely couldn’t get away then. And she would tell him all she knew, and more that she had made up, about that girl Diana.

  Jeremy watched her from afar, but she wasn’t noticing Jeremy. The fire was in her eyes, and he knew she meant to do mischief. He had watched her too many ye
ars, to protect his brother, not to know what her expressions portended.

  So as soon as he reached home he went to the telephone and called up the Sandersons’.

  Rodney came to the phone.

  “Hello, Rod! I just wanted to tell you that you left an enemy in the church aisle when you went away, and you better be prepared for almost anything. I think you’re due to meet her shortly, so get in touch with your Guide. I don’t know just what form this will take, but I didn’t want it to get you unawares, and it will be plenty. Get on your armor. And oh, Rod, tell Beryl I’ll be over in about an hour, and if you need any help call me also. See you subsea!”

  So Rodney was warned, but not definitely. And certainly Mr. Sanderson was not warned, for it was he who opened the front door for Jessica when she arrived, just as dinner was being put on the table and the family were on the way to the dining room.

  Mr. Sanderson bowed courteously and showed the caller into the small reception room nearer to the front door than the living room, where the more intimate guests were always taken. The he stepped to the dining room door and called, “Rodney, here’s a caller for you.” Then under his breath he whispered as Rod went by him, “Got your pen ready? It’s probably an autograph!”

  So Rodney came to stand in the doorway and looked into the room.

  Jessica had taken pains to sit in the most sheltered corner of the room where she would not be seen, or at least recognized at once by the person entering, and so Rodney came all the way into the room and looked around, and then seeing her he said “Oh!” in a tone that was anything but flattering.

  Jessica put away a delicate handkerchief with which she was doing a preliminary plaintive weep, and rising came toward him. “Rodney,” she said softly so that her voice would not reach to the other room—not yet—“I have something very important to tell you. Something that when you have heard you will be glad I told you. It is something I felt you ought to know, and for the sake of my old-time fondness for you I have put aside my natural timidity—”

  “What?” said Rodney sharply. “What did you say? Your natural timidity? I don’t remember that. But go on. Let’s get it over quick. You are holding up my host’s dinner.”

  “That won’t matter when you have heard what I have to say.”

  “Go ahead,” said Rodney, flinging up his head impatiently.

  “But Rodney, there is something else I want to ask first, for my own sake. I want you to do a personal favor for me.”

  “Yes?” said the young officer looking her straight in the eye with a wry grin on his lips. “I thought there would be some catch. Proceed!”

  Jessica drew a quivering breath and swept a swift glance of reproach at the young man, but she hurried on, knowing that he was quite capable of terminating this meeting without notice, but she meant to get in her work this time.

  “Well, then, Rod, I want my ring back again. I’ve suffered no end of trouble to think I ever gave it up, and I want it back again. Please, Rod. Be good to me. I’m so sorry I ever gave it up. Please give it back!”

  “What do you want it for?” asked the young man with almost a sneer on his nice lips, because he didn’t believe anything this girl was saying.

  “I want it to remember you by!” she said with almost a sob, and a quiver between every word.

  “Yes? Well, I wouldn’t care to be remembered by you, even if I had the ring. And I haven’t got it!”

  “You haven’t got it? What have you done with it? You haven’t given it to that other girl yet, have you? Oh, Rod!” And Jessica’s head drooped, and she bowed her face in her hands. “Oh, Rod! I didn’t think you’d do that!”

  “I certainly did not give it to any girl,” said Rodney severely. “I wouldn’t dishonor any other girl by giving her a ring that had been returned to me in scorn by a girl who had no honor herself.”

  There was a solemn pause while Jessica took in this implication, and then she cried out in a good simulation of despair, “Then what have you done with it?”

  “I sold it to a dealer in China two years ago. I didn’t want a thing like that cluttering around my life. I hated the sight of it and the thing it stood for. Thank God it is gone from my thoughts even, forever!”

  “Oh, Rod! How can you be so cruel to me? You once used to love me!”

  “The more fool I,” said Rodney. “I only thought I did, but I am grateful that I was made to see what you really were before it was too late. And now, was that all you came to say? I could not get that ring back even if I wanted to, and I would not even if I could. So that is my answer to that. Now, what else?”

  Then Jessica lifted her anguished head and looked him in the eyes with fire of anger in her own. “Yes, there is something else. And this is for your sake. I have found out that the girl you are going with now has a false heart. It is ironic that you should select two girls who are neither of them true to you. This girl you are courting here in Riverton is engaged to be married to a rich handsome fellow, of high birth, in New York, and she is to be married to him within a very short time. She has her trousseau bought, and her wedding dress is waiting for the time when he is expected home to claim her. I thought you ought to be told that before your affair here goes on any further. I had intended leaving Riverton myself a couple weeks ago, but I delayed till I could get opportunity to tell you this before it was too late. Now, I don’t expect you to be grateful at once, but I’m sure when you find out that what I have said is true, you will write and thank me.”

  Rodney stood looking at her with almost fury in his eyes for a moment, and then he said with dignity and severity, “I am too angry to answer you as you ought to be answered. It would be better for you to go now. I don’t care to talk with you anymore. Shall I open the door for you? Good afternoon. And don’t try anything like this again.”

  Rodney’s voice had been clear and decided, and the people in the other room could scarcely help hearing, though Mr. Sanderson did his best to create a diversion by dropping the brass tongs on the tiles of the hearth and tapping a spoon against a glass by his place. The family had not sat down, they had been sort of waiting for Rodney, but little by little they all perceived that Rodney was anything but pleased by his caller, and they all had more or less the feeling that he might presently need them to come in and say something that would make her leave. Mrs. Sanderson even ventured the thought to herself that if she went in and invited the girl to stay for dinner with them she would then take the hint and go, and she suggested this in a low tone to Beryl, but Beryl shook her head decidedly. “No, Mother, you don’t know her. She would stay and put a crimp in the whole works.” So the mother desisted, meditating whether or not it would be best for them to sit down and start dinner.

  But just then to their great relief Jeremy breezed in and walked right into the dining room with his cheery greeting. This made the conversation so general that it could but be heard in the front reception room. The next sound they heard was the front door closing emphatically after the unwanted guest.

  It did not take Jessica long to realize as she walked angrily down the pleasant street toward her bus that she had overstepped herself in this visit. If she had only stopped after the request for the ring and not gone on to tell about Diana, with all that horde where they could hear what she was saying, she might have had some effect. But now she saw that she had only made Rodney very angry by trying to run down Diana. Well, at least Diana had heard her and knew that she had made good her threat. She had attained that much. And she had made known the truth, or what she supposed was the truth, to Rodney. Though it really never made much difference to Jessica whether what she told was the truth or not, so it hit home on somebody and hurt, preferably the people she didn’t like.

  So Jessica went on back to Riverton and hunted out Louella to commiserate with her. Of course Louella told her she had been very, very brave, and she was sure something drastic would come of all this, but secretly she decided that she would stay away from the Graemes for a while till t
his blew over, or else she would be blamed with it all by Donald, who was rather plain-spoken and didn’t mind hurting when he thought it would do some good.

  But Jessica, weeping herself angrily to sleep, resolved that next she would go up to New York, hunt out that officer Diana was engaged to, and put trouble to brewing there for Diana when she got home to put on her wedding dress, which she felt pretty sure Diana would do, now that Rodney knew the truth about her. He hadn’t said anything, still these closemouthed soldiers knew how to shut up, but they smoldered inside. She was sure she had seen fire for somebody in Rodney’s eyes. He might blame her at first, but Diana would have to account for it all, and it wouldn’t be so fine for him. She doubted if he would go to church tonight with her. Perhaps she would go herself just to find out.

  Before Jessica fell asleep that night she decided it would be a good thing if she were to go up to New York the next morning and hunt out that bridegroom of Diana before Diana got home. For undoubtedly she would be leaving Riverton in the morning, after what she must have overheard today.

  Then, after she had made that New York swell understand what had been going on, and put a crimp in Diana’s plans, she had only one more thing to do. She had to find out just where Rod and Jerry were located, what work they were doing, and somehow get into their offices and hunt up those papers her husband wanted. Then she would have her blue diamond, and that was all she cared for in life. After she had that, maybe she’d get a divorce and hunt up some nice returning officer for herself, for she was done with Rod. The way he had looked at her when he put her out of the house had settled that for her definitely.

  Then she went to sleep.

  Chapter 19

  It had been a bit embarrassing for Rodney when he came back to the dining room, to meet the family that he had come so to respect and love. He felt shamed and humiliated, until he suddenly realized that that was what Jessica had wanted, and that was why she had come there, just to humiliate him, in return for his avoiding her. He smiled to himself wryly.