Blue Ruin

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “Oh, anything,” she said happily. “It all looks good to me. I think I’ll take a tomato stuffed with chicken salad. I remember I had one of those here last winter when you brought me and it was delicious.”

  Then she lifted her eyes and suddenly saw a back and shoulders and a sleek black head that reminded her of Dana. It wasn’t Dana. She knew that instantly, but her heart had had time to give a joyful leap and her eyes to light themselves with a heavenly light before they suddenly went dark again, and her heart gave a tug of disappointment. It wasn’t Dana, but it brought Dana right there in the room with his back to her, and she had to sit and watch for him to turn his face—the face that was not Dana’s—to prove to herself over again each time that it was not really Dana, so like were his shoulders and his sleek head and his long, white, tapering hands that he used with such grace. Even his movements seemed to be Dana, until he turned a hawklike face and frowned at the waiter.

  Mother Brooke’s watching eyes saw the cloud come over her girl’s face, and following her glance knew instantly what was the matter. She had thought that Dana had come after her! Poor child! Poor little girl. The mother began to pray in her heart, a wordless prayer, leaving the issue with God.

  Presently the man who looked like Dana got up, paid his bill, and left the room, and the restlessness died out of Lynette’s eyes, but the light did not return. There was a wistful, anxious pucker around them like haunted eyes, which hurt her mother.

  Aunt Hilda, however, created a digression, bringing out her list and making the girls check off the things that were still remaining to be done.

  “There’s hairnets, and my blouse at the dressmaker’s, and some aromatic ammonia. Don’t forget those, Dorothy! And your father needs a couple more shirts. Just call up the place where he always gets them and ask them to send them out special late this afternoon. Mary, I think Lynette won’t need but one hat. Let everything go till we get to London or Paris. Did you say she has a black dress? Satin? Oh, that’s perfectly all right. They’re useful, one can get along with very few other dresses.”

  So the talk drifted back to the immediate preparations, but somehow they had lost their zest for Lynette. Her eyes were ever searching the throng around the tables, and her ear listening above the orchestra that was discoursing wonderful music for the sound of a voice she knew and loved.

  For now a strange thing had happened to Lynette. All the differences of the day before seemed to have vanished, and Dana had become a dream man once more, the beau of her childhood in whom was found no fault. She saw him with the eyes of her soul—a man who had made great attainments and won great honors, a person who had a right to say what was what and whose future was to be phenomenal. And now she began to wonder why she had felt she must go away and to berate herself for having cared so much about a trifling birthday party, and to be restless for the time to come when they would go up to the house, because that would be the place to which Dana was coming if he came after her, or to which he would telephone or send a telegram in case he could not come. He could not find her down here in this throng.

  But she was whirled away on the business of the hour again and made to forget for a little and to be interested in finding a little book to send back to the dear grandmother and a special kind of fly in the sporting and athletic department for Elim’s fishing. But that brought a pang, too, for she was sending no message to Dana.

  But now she must wait for Dana to make a move. It wrung her heart.

  Night came, and the family dinner, sent in from a caterer’s. It was all delightfully new and exciting, and Lynette entered into it happily, for now she felt that at any minute Dana might call her up, or the doorbell might ring and there be Dana, come to carry her home. What joy if he had! She would be ready to forgive him everything, she thought, if he felt that way about her and really could not bear to have her go away. The undertone of these thoughts ran along with everything she said or did.

  Until at last she awoke to the fact that it was half past eleven and Dana had not made a sign, and they were all going to bed.

  Even on her pillow, with her eyes closed, she remembered that the telephone was just outside her door in the hall and Dana might be driving down and get in late; or perhaps he had had a flat tire or something and he would telephone the house.

  But no ring broke the silence of the sleeping house, and Lynette, worn out with the excitement of the day, slept, too.

  Only the mother, by her side, bearing the pain of her child’s life testing, kept vigil, and prayed that all might be as God had appointed and that her darling might be fully yielded to His will.

  Morning dawned, and the glad hurry of the departure.

  “Are you sure you put those slippers in my bag, Dorothy? Have you got plenty of handkerchiefs along, Lynette? Mary, I wish you would take this shawl to your mother as a present from me. It looks just like her and she ought to have it. I always think of her in her pretty gray silk and white lace when I take this out of the drawer, and I simply never wear it myself. It’s practically new. Dorothy, where are the boys? You’ll have to see whether they have put in everything I laid out on their beds last night. Don’t let them forget their pajamas. They are so careless! Lynnie, will you just see if that’s the mail down at the door? I thought I heard the postman’s ring.”

  And Lynette hurried down in one of her breathless moments of hope. There might be a letter! A special delivery letter! That was it! Perhaps somehow Elim had forgotten to deliver hers to Dana right away and he had written her at once that he was coming, or that she must wait for him, or something—in her desperation she didn’t know what.

  But there was no letter for her.

  Slowly she came back and went on with her preparations, steeling her heart somehow to put Dana out of the question. He had not cared to even write her a farewell line.

  Then out of the possibilities there leaped another pleasant one. Perhaps there would be flowers at the ship for her! Perhaps he would send her a message in that way, a wordless message, but still one that would make it possible for her to go on and carry out the trip as planned and wait patiently until a letter could come across to tell her all that his flowers would promise. That would be it, of course. Or—he might come down to see her off. He might have been detained till the last minute. Would it be wrong to go back if he asked her even as late as that? Would it be dishonorable toward her uncle and aunt? She wondered what her mother would think about that. She ought to be prepared for any possible contingency. There might not be time when it arose to consider a question like that. She would have to act, and she felt sure that unless she had steeled herself beforehand she could only trust herself to act from her heart, not from her head.

  So she solaced herself with hope from moment to moment, hour after hour, till the time came at last to get into the car and be driven away down to the wharf. Then suddenly she realized that her mother was not going with her, and she turned to her with panic in her eyes.

  “Oh, I can’t go, Mother dear! I can’t! It seems as though it would choke me to go. I must go back with you tonight. I must! I must!”

  “But you won’t, dear,” said her mother folding her in her arms tenderly. “You are walking in the appointed way, and you are going to be led. You could not go back with dignity now, and all the arguments that you agreed to yesterday are just as true today. Trust your own decision and trust in God.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Lynette, her eyes full of trouble yet.

  “But Mother, if Dana comes to you, you will explain everything? You will not let him think I ran away in pique. You will not—oh, I don’t know what I mean, but you understand, don’t you, Mother?”

  She clung to her mother’s hand in almost tragic appeal, and the mother did not fail her.

  “It’s all right, Lynnie, I understand, dear. And I’ll say all that you want said if the time comes. You trust your heavenly Father!”

  Then they came to the gangplank and stepped on board, and all was bustle and eager
confusion. There was no further chance to talk alone to her mother, no spot to get away by one’s self. Everybody was laughing and talking and crying and saying good-bye. People were crowding into cabins with arms full of flowers, and exclaiming over the accommodations, and making feeble jokes and laughing very hard at them.

  They went to their cabins and saw their baggage safely placed. They exclaimed as others had done over the convenience of the appointments and the skillful economy of space, over the big wardrobe and the chest of drawers, and the adorable little porthole of a window, and had their laugh and their joke about the two-story beds.

  And there were flowers there, banks of them for Dorothy, and a lot for Aunt Hilda, but none for Lynette, though she went carefully over the cards while Dorothy was powdering her nose.

  With a sinking heart, she followed the rest on deck to watch the people.

  They passed through the big cabin with its comfortable chairs and scattered tables and great bookcase filled with enticing books of travel and art and history, and Lynette had a passing thought of how delightful all this would have been if she had not carried such a heavy heart. Then they went out on the upper deck where they could see the people arriving, and Lynette searched the throng in vain for Dana’s tall shoulders and well-set head, with his soft panama hat pulled well over his eyes in what seemed such a distinguished way.

  At last the gong sounded and the cry went out “All ashore!” It thrilled through Lynette’s heart with a sick, sore feeling that made her want to cling to her mother, hide her head in her neck, go home with her and never, never leave her anymore.

  But the clinging and the weeping and the good-bye were over in a moment. The mother kept a brave face till the last, smiled, waved her hand, said, “Remember!” and just as they were parting, “Trust!” Then the second cry went out, and she was gone, down among the throng.

  Lynette’s eyes followed her. There she was, standing on the dock alone, except for the chauffeur who was to take her back to the Grand Central Station at once when the boat sailed. Her mother, down there alone! Why had she let her do it? Something keener than her love for Dana gripped her heart now. What was this unspeakably awful thing that she was about to do? Put the ocean between herself and all that she loved! For what? Why did she want to see the world? These thoughts beat their way through her excited brain while she stood there and tried to smile and shout maudlin nothings into the air as everybody else was doing, things that nobody could hear nor answer.

  Then Uncle Reamer came with little rolls of bright paper tapes and showed her how to snap them off into the air toward the beloved one on the pier, and she tried her hand at this, too, while yet in undertone her anxious heart was crying out for Dana, sick and sore because she could not see him anywhere, and the minutes were going, going. Oh, if it could just be over! If she were coming home instead of going out into the unknown!

  There seemed an unconscionable delay. Something about a boat ahead of them that could not get out of the way till it was unloaded. And there they stood on tired feet and tried eagerly to signal last messages that they had not thought of before, messages that did not matter anyway and could not be understood, and Lynette suffered a whole year’s agony during that few minutes’ wait. She studied her mother’s face and saw the lines of care and age that had been graven on them since she went away last year, and she thought again of all the things she had planned to do for her and with her this summer, and now she was running away!

  Over and over again!

  But at last the gang plank was shoved off, and the stately vessel glided slowly out from its moorings and sailed away.

  Till the last minute Lynette studied the crowd, strained her eyes to recognize someone who came running down the dock, but Dana was not there!

  And the mother, watching her child through eyes that were now filled with tears, had her own agony to fight out. She knew when the beloved eyes were looking over her head, hunting, hunting for a face that was not there, that should have been there! Ah! She understood, and wondered again if she ought to have encouraged the child to go.

  And when the forward part of the vessel had passed too far to recognize her Lynnie and she let her indifferent glance wander over the rest of the boat as it passed, taking in the whole length of deck with its struggling, shouting, almost frantic good-byes, picking out an individual now and then who was particularly noticeable, life suddenly seemed a ghastly thing to her, and she found herself pitying humanity as a whole. The boat seemed like a picture of life, and its separations. There sat an old lady close to the rail, her head decked out with some foolish youthful headgear, her face powdered, her gnarled hands gripping a great mass of the bright paper ribbons, her trophy from the fray. And old woman caring to snatch and keep a mess like that! And there at the stern alone, clinging to the rail and waving frantically, stood two fat, youthful flappers, skirts very brief, hair the latest thing in boy bob, noses white as a marble statues’, lashes darkened heavily, their made-up lips stretched wide as any baby bawling, the tears rolling down their rouged cheeks. Crying at the top of their lungs, they were, and shouting, “G–g–g–g–gd! B–b–b–by!”

  They were the most laughable objects her eyes had ever seen, yet she found herself suddenly weeping with them. Weeping not alone on her own account that her girl was going from her, and in trouble, but weeping for the sorrow of the world. Sorrow that was going on every day and yet did not seem to draw humanity any nearer to the only possible source of help and comfort, the heart of the Savior of mankind.

  She turned away, wiping her eyes, and signaled to the chauffeur that she was ready to go. The ship was out in the water now, mingling with the others like her and hard to distinguish any longer. Well, Lynnie was gone, and safe for a while from the thing her mother had feared.

  And yet, the mother’s heart was heavy, for now the burden of the girl’s doubt had descended upon her and she could not help continually wondering whether she had done right to urge her to go.

  “Well, I must just take the advice I gave her,” she said to herself as she settled back into the cushions of the car. “I have done the best I knew how, and I must just leave the rest to the Father. But now, I’ve got to go home and face Dana!”

  Lynette, standing alone at the rail of the vessel, looked off to the rapidly disappearing shore and kept saying over and over to herself, “He didn’t come! He didn’t come! Dana didn’t care to come! He didn’t even write or phone or telegraph!” Oh, it seemed as if she must plunge back in the waves, swim to the shore, get home somehow, and straighten things out. It couldn’t be that she and Dana had suddenly become separated this way! Oh, ghastly, ghastly life! How was it to be withstood?

  And all around her was the unspeakable loveliness of distance, water dancing in the sunlight, new and wonderful ships passing by. A future of delight before her. Oh, why could she not have had this before she went home at all? Before her heart rest had been disturbed? Why had it come, this wonderful opportunity that she never dreamed would be hers, and come just when she could not enjoy it? Oh, if her heart could only be free from worry while she was gone!

  Then she remembered her mother’s words, and she looked up to the blue expanse overhead and said softly under her breath, “Father, I’m going to try to trust, but You’ll have to help me. I can’t do it alone. Teach me what You want of me!”

  Chapter 16

  Elim had not got off his letter in time for the boat. He had been too much occupied the first night to even remember it. When he considered it the next morning he found that he felt embarrassed over the knowledge that had come to him. How could he write in cheerful style to his sister with that maddening knowledge on his conscience? He had a feeling that it would glare between the lines and shout itself out to her as she read. And yet he must write, and he must somehow make her know what kind of a mutt that poor fish was.

  So after lunch the next day, he took a pad and pencil and wended his way to the woods while Mary Somers, the washerwoman, kept Grand
mother Rutherford company, washing up the kitchen floor and detailing how her seven grandchildren had the whooping cough.

  Humped on the moss beside his favorite stone, Elim got out his knife, sharpened his pencil elaborately, and then sat and thought. He bit three beautiful points off before he got down to work at last. His brows were knit with perplexity and doubt, but his jaws were set with a grim determination.

  Dear kid: (it began)

  Didn’t get this off after all in time to make the ship. But I guess you didn’t miss it. I had to keep the old sport from getting down in the mouth. I guess you know who I mean. Found her chasing a mouse in the tin cupboard when I got back from the station. Called Snipe in, and I guess he finished him. Haven’t heard anything more from him to date. Went fishing with Spud and caught a whole string. Gave him half. We had them for supper with flannel cakes and syrup. Some combination. You ought to have been here. You wouldn’t believe it but it’s darned lonesome since you left. Hope Muth gets home by night. I didn’t leave the house alone when I went fishing, so don’t worry. Old Petticoat said she’d stay till five o’clock. She didn’t keep her word on account of her husband getting home and demanding her at once, but somebody else came. I guess you know what chump I mean. Sorry to hurt your feelings, but I don’t like to spoil this nice paper with his name. He came straight from a ride, hadn’t been home to get his letter, and Old Sport asked him in and gave him a piece of your birthday cake. Clever lady, what?

  Say, Lynnie, I don’t want to be mean, but for cat’s sake, what do you see in that egg? I don’t know if you like it or not, but I think you ought to know he isn’t worth the parsnips. He’s a sneak and a coward. He has a yellow streak a foot wide up his back. The truth is nothing in his young life, and as for his religion, it’s all baloney! I’m telling you! Take it from me and forget him! He isn’t worth the paper his name is written on, and I know what I’m saying. I’m your brother and I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think a whole lot of you. Just call him a blank and think no more of it. Next time you pick one, pick a man! I’m saying it!