“I haven’t much to unpack,” laughed Lynette. “I’m afraid I shall make a sorry companion for you, you bird of gorgeous plumage. I had a peep into your steamer trunk and suitcase before they went away and it certainly looked like a rainbow. I shall have to stay in the background till we get somewhere and I can get fitted out a little better.”
“Indeed you won’t, Lynnie dear,” declared the vivacious Dorothy. “I got after Cousin Marta on the telephone and made her will you all her darling dodads and sports clothes and evening dresses. She would have done it anyway if she had had time to think. She’ll never wear them again. Her sister can’t live. The doctor said so when she sent out to California, only she rallied for a while and they hoped she might live for a few years. But the telegram said she was sinking rapidly and Marta will go straight into mourning of course. When she comes out of mourning these tricks will be all out of date and she’ll have to get new things. You might as well have them as her maid; anyway, she has loads of money to buy more. Of course she’s ages older than you, but that don’t mean a thing these days, and Cousin Marta wears her skirts to the limit, so they won’t be too long for you. I’m dying to see them on you. She’s just your build and size. I know some of them will be just precious. Of course we may have to change something here or there, but that’s nothing. The stewardess will help us. And evening dresses are easy to fix. Almost anything goes it if has a back and a front and a gold rose.”
“Oh, but Dorothy! I couldn’t wear your cousin’s things. They would be much too gorgeous for me. Why, I wouldn’t have anyplace to wear them either. Remember I’m only along in the background. I’m not going among people I know. Don’t distress yourself about me. Don’t try to dress me up to fit the picture. Let me stay in the background.”
“Background nothing! You’re my cousin, and you’re going to stay so. We are going everywhere together, and you’ve got to play up. Let’s open Marta’s steamer trunk and see what she sent. I do hope she put the silver and jade one in. It’s a beauty! We’ll want that for the first night. You and I are going to dance the whole evening long and have the dandiest time! They have a wonderful orchestra on board, and the floor is peachy. There are three men I know, and I’ll let you have one of them for your special during the trip. He’s rather wild, but he has nice eyes, and he can dance like an angel.”
“Do angels dance?” asked Lynette amused, and then sobering down. “I’m sorry dear, but I don’t! You must just make up your mind that I’m an older sister, a sort of country cousin who isn’t in society and doesn’t want to be. I’m very old-fashioned, you know.”
“So’s your old man!” said Dorothy brightly. “You’re going to learn to dance! I’ll begin to teach you right now!” And she caught up her cousin and whirled her about in the tiny space beside the trunk till they both fell laughing into the berth and Lynette’s hair came tumbling down around her shoulders in a lovely golden mass.
“Oh, look at your gorgeous locks!” cried Dorothy. “Aren’t you the bee’s knees with all that top knot! I thought of growing mine but it would take so long and look so scraggy that I gave it up. I hate to be a fright while it’s growing. Get up now and try the step again. It won’t take you long to learn.”
“No, dear!” said Lynette quite firmly. “You’ll have to make up your mind that dancing is one of the things I don’t do. I don’t want to argue about it, and I’m not going to try to make you think as I do about it, but I just don’t do it. I went over that question four years ago, the first time it had ever really come to my notice as something to be decided, because as a matter of course I had never done it before. I decided that it wasn’t a good thing, not for me anyway, nor for what I have planned to do in life, and so I just settled the question once for all. I’m sorry if I disappoint you, but there are some things I can’t yield and this is one of them.”
“Oh hen!” said Dorothy disappointedly. “But you’ll get over that when you’ve been out in the world a little while. I suppose I’ll just have to wait. Mamma said you’d have ideas of your own, but you’re nice anyhow. Come on, let’s have a smoke! I’m almost ready to pass away. I haven’t smoked all the morning because Mamma kept sticking around and she makes such a fuss.”
Lynette faced about aghast. Her cousin!
“But Dorothy! You don’t smoke!”
“Sure I do! Been smoking ever since I went to boarding school. Wouldn’t be in it if I didn’t. All the girls smoke. Where’ve you been that you didn’t know that?”
“I’ve been in a place where no one does,” said Lynette with a wistful look in her eyes and a sudden yearning for the safe, sane halls of her alma mater. “But Dorothy, we might as well talk it out now as ever, and then if you don’t want to go around with me, why, that’s up to you. I don’t smoke, and I don’t believe in it! In fact I hate it! But that’s neither here nor there. If I didn’t hate it I wouldn’t do it because of what my mother and my dear little grandmother would think of me. I can’t see how you can go against your mother’s wish even if you haven’t any ideas of your own against it.”
“Oh, baloney!” said Dorothy, casting herself down upon the pillows and kicking a hat box off the foot of the berth. “You don’t have to mind your mother! That’s an antiquated theory. It’s all been shown up! Haven’t you ever found that out? Why, your father and your mother aren’t really any better than you are! They haven’t any right to say what you will do or what you won’t do just because they’ve been here longer than you have! Everybody is born free and equal, and everybody has a right to order his own life as he pleases! I please to smoke. Why should my mother interfere merely because she’s my mother? She loves me because she is in the habit of having me around of course, and I’m fond of her, but I’m not going to be hampered and hindered by her. She has no right whatever to order me round.”
“Dorothy!” said Lynette, standing up and facing her cousin, “I can’t listen to such terrible talk any longer. I’ll go out in the cabin there and sit in a chair all night, but I won’t stay here and listen to you dishonor your father and mother! Do you know what the Bible says about honoring your father and mother? Don’t you know it is one of God’s commandments?”
“Rubbish! More baloney! People don’t believe in a God anymore, and the Bible is an antiquated book! Why should I try to obey some stuffy old commands?”
“The fool hath said in his heart there is not God!”
Lynette quoted it quietly, almost without knowing she was speaking aloud, but Dorothy caught up the words.
“Oh, yes, I’m a little fool, I suppose, but don’t preach at me for pity’s sake. I’m dying for a smoke, that’s all. I’ll be all right when I have it, and I’m going to take it! If you don’t like it you can go outside,” and she sprang up and took out her cigarette case.
Lynette quietly opened the door and went out. She felt suddenly alone and old, and wondered again why she had ever thought she could come. It wasn’t a place for her. And here she was in a discussion with her cousin right off at the start! How was life going to be possible together if that was the state of the case? Had she done wrong? Should she have avoided the issue? Such had not been her training, but would that have been being wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove?
No, she couldn’t listen to Dorothy calling her mother and her Bible and her God in question! Aunt Hilda had wanted her to be an influence for good in Dorothy’s life, and surely she shouldn’t pass such things over lightly. Yet was there anything else she could have done or said? Had she been wrong in being so outspoken?
She wandered off to a far corner of the deck where few people were about and where she could stand by the railing and look off at the wide, glittering sea upon which they were gliding along so smoothly it seemed as if they were on wheels.
Problems, problems, on land or sea! Was the fault her own? Had she grown narrow? Had she grown sharp and argumentative? Perhaps Dana had seen that in her, too. Perhaps he had had reason to feel she was as much changed as she felt him to
be. She must pray for sweetness and strength. She must keep quiet and let the Lord lead her. She must not grow narrow or critical or hard. She must not try to impose her own beliefs on others and make herself disagreeable, of course. But she must not yield an iota of what she believed to be right, nor lower her own standard in any degree! That was settled! For the rest, she was here and must stay for a time at least, and her business was to witness. That was all, just witness, witness for the right, not preach. Let everybody see what Christ could do with a surrendered soul. She could leave the rest with God. She need not worry whether she was accomplishing anything or not. She did not have to accomplish. That was God’s part. She was just a witness!
She did not know what a pleasant picture she made as she stood with her hand on the rail, her soft hair blown a little around her face, her simple dark-blue tailored dress that was neither too short nor too tight and yet was lovely in its outline, her slim silken ankles braced against the breeze. Yet off across a pile of steamer chairs a young man who had seen her when they first came on board was watching her and was hoping he might meet her. She looked like a girl who would be worth meeting. There were not many like that in the world anymore. He doubted if this one would be what she seemed if he knew her better. Perhaps it would be better not to know, just watch her from afar and have the pleasure of thinking she was as lovely in her character as in her face. Very likely she was like all the rest, though, for there came that other girl again, the tall one with the boyish hair and form, and the pouting, discontented lips that were too hideously red—the girl that took her away before. She was putting her arm around her now and drawing her away with her again. It was just as well! They were probably all alike. Some hours ago when they first came on board he had seen the tall one out behind a pile of life preservers puffing away at a cigarette with frantic earnestness as if she were in a hurry and trying to hide. Likely they were friends or sisters, and what one did so did the other. What a pity the girls were all going that way. No sacred womanhood anymore. He turned away and paced the deck and tried to think of other things.
“Come, Lynnie,” Dorothy was saying. “I was cross I know. I was a fool. Forgive me. I didn’t quite mean all that bunk I handed you. I just wanted to try you out, I guess. Come on back and let’s make up. You needn’t dance, you needn’t smoke, and you may preach at me if you like, but let’s get out the trunk and try on the dresses. I’m bored stiff, and it isn’t time to dress for dinner yet. Come on back.”
Lynette went back and plunged into the beauties of Cousin Marta’s wardrobe.
It was a gorgeous array as Dorothy had said. There were satins and silks of every hue in the rainbow, and cut in the most fantastic styles. There were sports clothes galore, with loud dashes of color in curious combination. There was a silver cloth as soft as a kitten’s ear and a golden gauze that looked like spun sunshine. But there was nothing there save a smart little black dinner frock and a white wool jersey that Lynette really fancied for herself, and in the end, after she had admired to Dorothy’s full satisfaction, she folded them all carefully again and locked them away in the steamer trunk. Then she put on her own little blue crepe frock that she had made herself and worn at home that last evening in the sunset when Dana had walked away with another girl and left her life blank. The memory of it almost spoiled her evening, but she put it on bravely and went down to dinner.
“You’re odd!” said Dorothy. “You might have had all those gorgeous things, and you don’t want them. But you do look better in your own. You look sort of different—and more—well—like yourself. I guess there’s something I don’t understand. I wish I did. You’re lovely anyway, and I’m glad you are you.”
Lynette smiled wistfully and wound her arm around the slim waist of her cousin’s attractive but brief little dance frock of rose color and went into the dining room. She wondered if perhaps life wasn’t going to be even more complicated here than if she had stayed at home and worked out her problem with Dana and the little flapper girl.
Oh, how was she going to stand it alone? How was she to know which way to turn in all the maze of paths?
“I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,” rang a verse in her memory. She was not alone! It was all right. On water or land! She would just trust!
Chapter 18
The stranger was at a table not far from where the Reamers sat. He was so placed that he could watch Lynette’s profile, but Dorothy was sitting so that she was straight across from him, and their lifted eyes frequently met.
“There’s a perfectly stunning man over at the second table, Dad,” said Dorothy. “He has blue plush eyes and a nice smile.”
“Don’t tell me he’s smiled at you already, kitten. I’ll have to put him overboard if he has!” declared her father, smiling at her indulgently.
“Oh, no, nothing like that yet,” declared the wild child. “I only saw him smile at the man he is talking to at the table. But I’m dying to dance with him. I just know he dances like a breeze. You’ve got to chase him down and introduce him to me, Dad. I simply can’t wait to meet him!”
“What if I don’t like him, Dottie?”
“That’s nothing in my young life!” chanted the spoiled infant. “You’ll have to bring him or I’ll get him myself you know.”
“And what am I to do, baby? Go trotting around the deck asking for a man with blue plush eyes and an enchanting smile? There might be more than one applicant for the position, you know. Especially if I told him I had more than one beautiful daughter,” and he cast a loving glance toward Lynette. “How do you know, now, but Lynette will cut you out, Dot? What will you do then? You’ve never had to compete with so beautiful a rival before.”
“Oh, that’s all right! Lynn doesn’t dance. She’s going to be stuffy just as Mamma said she would be. Oh, you needn’t look that way, we’ve had it all out and shaken hands over it, haven’t we, Lynn? We’ve agreed to be friends and each go our different ways, but it’s going to be awfully dull not having Lynn to go to dances, and I’ve simply got to be amused or I’ll be horrid. So it’s up to you, Dad! Go to it. You can get the names of the men at that table. You won’t have any trouble. The others are only ordinary. One is old with white hair, and one is red and fat, and one needs a haircut. My man has blue plush eyes and faces this way, yes, the tall one, you can’t mistake him.”
“All right, kitten, I’ll do my best,” said Uncle Reamer. “But what are we going to do to make Lynette have a good time? If she doesn’t like the dancing we must get some nice young folks to walk the deck with her.”
“Oh, Uncle Roth, I’d much rather walk with you!” protested Lynette in distress. “I don’t really like to meet strangers, and I came on the trip to be with you. Don’t you want to take a walk with me, and you and Aunt Hilda?”
Aunt Hilda smiled comfortably.
“I think I’ll just stay inside tonight, dear. I really ought to keep Dorothy in sight, at least, you know. You and your uncle take your walk. I’m just too tired to move.”
“Oh, stuffy again!” complained Dorothy. “You don’t have to tag me around as if I were a Victorian maiden. That’s old stuff, and I won’t stand for it!”
“Well, I like to watch you dance, dear,” said her mother gently. “I won’t be in your way.”
“It’s rotten!” said Dorothy unfilially. “If I’m going to be continually shadowed on this trip, I’ll take the next boat and do as I please!”
“There, there, kitten!” pacified her father. “Just ease down on Mamma. She’s tired, you know, and she likes to think that you are her little girl yet.”
“Well, I’m not!” pouted the rebel, “and I’ll do something outrageous if you don’t let up on this chaperoning business. Nobody else has to stand it and I won’t!”
“Look here, young woman,” said her father, a more determined yet still indulgent note in his voice, “if you keep on that strain, I won’t go hunt your plush man for you.”
“Oh, yes, Dad, you’re just kidding me alon
g now. But I mean it. I’m grown up and it’s time you knew it.”
They hushed her up playfully and turned the talk in another strain, but Lynette was left with the impression of unrest that brooded in the hearts of her aunt and uncle about their pretty, wayward daughter. It perhaps was not going to be so pleasant in their company as she had anticipated. Was there always a trouble in every family, always a fly in every ointment?
She glanced at the two boys farther down the table, sturdy school boys, interested in their own affairs, discoursing about engines and propellers and powers and knots and various other matters of the sea. They had not yet reached the stage of rebellion where their sister had arrived, but they seemed as much aloof as if they belonged to strangers. They were a couple of wild young boys who were engaged in getting as much out of their parents as they could comfortably extract. Of course, they were nice and pleasant and funny about it, but they showed already that their interests were their own and they felt no loyalty toward their family. Lynette wondered if here was a place where she might work. Could she win the boys and make them her companions? They seemed so much like Elim in some ways, and it would be less lonely if she had someone to depend upon. It was plain that Dorothy was a bird of passage and contact with her could only be established at intervals when she had nothing else to do. A great loneliness swept over her in the midst of the happy room full of people. She wished again that she had not come and felt that she had been wrong to run away in a fit just because she was disappointed in Dana. There were other things in her home besides Dana, other interests in life even if Dana failed her altogether.
But there was little time for such thoughts.
People began to drift over to their table and stop to talk. New York friends of the family, and they all went on deck.
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