Blue Ruin Read online

  Mother Brooke had breakfast on the table when Lynette came down. There were her favorite muffins and an omelet as light as a feather. But Lynette ate scarcely a mouthful. It seemed to her that every particle she tried to swallow choked her, though outwardly she maintained a degree of calm, and even a touch of cheerfulness.

  Elim was glum and unnaturally serious. He fell to advising his sister as though he were a man, widely traveled.

  “You wantta look out they don’t cheatya over there, kid,” he addressed her pompously as one suddenly assuming responsibility toward her. “And tips! They take the very eye teeth outta ya. You wantta have plenty change er ya can’t get anywhere. Tom’s uncle hadta—”

  Lynette smiled mischievously at him.

  “You write it all out for me, Elim,” she said tenderly, with a lingering, wistful look at her brother. “Write me a volume of advice and send it down by tonight’s mail. It’ll get to the boat before it sails and I’ll have something to read on board. You know you and I have got to keep up this summer by writing a lot to each other to make up for all that fishing we’re missing.”

  Elim grinned and then choked over his muffin and retired precipitately to the kitchen to get his voice once more.

  There were tears in the eyes of the others as they looked bravely at one another behind smiles.

  But it was the dear grandmother who was the most courageous of them all. She said the quaintest things to make them laugh, and was constantly fluttering out of her chair and into her room to return with some little offering for the journey.

  Once it was a pile of sweet, transparent handkerchiefs all marked with tiny little initials. She had sat up half the night to mark them. They were frail as cobwebs and faint with lavender and violet, and some of them yellow with age. Lynette took them tenderly and flung her warm young arms about the frail old lady with the tears springing anew to her eyes.

  “Grandmother! Your lovely hankies! How I’ve always loved them! That’s the one you let me take to my first birthday party. And the one with the butterfly is the one you bound around my head when I fell downstairs. The forget-me-not one you let me carry to Aunt Lute’s wedding. And the one with the little lace corner you pinned around my doll the day Mother had to go to the hospital. Oh, you dear! How can I dare to take such precious things with me?”

  “That’s all right, Lynnie. I’ve been saving them all my life for just this time. Why, don’t you know it’s almost like going myself to send my handkerchiefs.”

  So they lifted one another’s burden and strain, and made the way of going glad for the girl they loved until it almost broke her heart to leave them. Nothing had ever seemed so dear as her home in the morning sunlight, the breakfast table ready to clear off, the dishes to wash, and Elim’s lines and poles outside the kitchen door waiting to go fishing. For an instant, as she rose from the table, it seemed to her that nothing could ever drag her away. She would telephone that she could not come. She would stay at home and wash dishes with Mother and read to Grandmother and go fishing with Elim. Dana wasn’t even in the picture. It was just the dearness of home and her own folks. And she was leaving them for what? Suppose she didn’t ever have a chance to see the world again. Well, what of it? It couldn’t be any better than just this precious piece of the world. Her world.

  Every line of her little figure suddenly sagged, every feature of her expressive face faltered. Her grandmother saw it and began to pray. Her mother saw it and rose to action. Lynette must not hold back now. God had sent this way out of a critical situation. Lynette must have time to save her from making what might be a grave mistake in her life.

  “Lynnie,” she said suddenly grave, “aren’t you going to—that is, why don’t you—I mean, I would if I were you. I think you should call up and at least—well—tell Dana, or say good-bye or something!”

  Lynette faced about with a startled look, all her hesitation gone, strength and decision, albeit perplexity, in her glance.

  “I wonder!” she said as if she were thinking aloud. “I’m not sure I should.”

  “Well, I think your long friendship merits at least so much courtesy. You will feel better afterward if you have done it. It will look—well—less like running away.” She was about to add “pettishly” but changed her mind.

  Lynette, wide-eyed and thoughtful, answered with slowly hesitant lips.

  “He—has no right to expect—”

  “No, of course not!” answered her mother with a sharp relief in her voice. “But it would be courteous. He cannot complain if you have been perfectly courteous. And you can make it quite casual.”

  “Yes,” said Lynette, and with head up marched quickly out of the hall to the telephone.

  They heard her call the old familiar number with a clear, almost haughty voice. A moment more they heard Justine Whipple’s Uriah-Heepish whine, as Lynette had once called Miss Whipple’s telephone voice.

  Lynette asked if she might speak to Dana. Her voice was purely haughty now, almost businesslike.

  “Why, I’ll see if he can come—unless—perhaps you might give me the message,” drawled Justine Whipple slyly. “You see Dana and Jessie Belle are getting ready to drive to the Mohawk trail this morning, and—”

  The truth was that neither Dana nor her young guest were as yet awake.

  “I see,” said Lynette coldly cheery. “Well, it’s of no consequence at all, Miss Justine. No, don’t bother. It’ll do next time I see him. No, it’s not important. Good-bye!” And Lynette hung up sharply and came back into the dining room, head up, cheeks blazing, eyes bright like steel blades.

  “He’s not there just now,” she stated coolly. “I’ll leave a note.”

  She stepped to the little dining room desk where her mother kept her bills and checkbook, and tearing off a slip of paper from a pad that lay there, she wrote quickly:

  I’ve changed my mind and am going to Europe in search of poise. Hope you have a pleasant summer.

  Hastily,

  Lynette

  She slipped it in an envelope, sealed it, and addressed it to Dana.

  “There, Elim can leave that at the house as he goes by on his way home this morning,” she said carelessly. “Grandmother, would you mind asking him if he has remembered it?”

  Elim had gone down the road to borrow Hiram Scarlett’s Ford to take Lynette and her mother to the train. He came driving up to the door with a swagger, as if he had just purchased a five-thousand-dollar car. “Now, girls, don’t you worry about us tonight!” said Grandmother. “Elim and I will be perfectly all right. We’re going to play checkers till eight o’clock, and then read for an hour and then go to bed, and Elim is going to sleep on the living room couch, close by my door, so you just have a good time and don’t think of us once. We’re going to have ‘the time of our life.’ Isn’t that the way you say it, Elim?”

  “You said it!” responded Elim heartily. “I’ll bet on you every time, Grandma. Say, you know you promised you wouldn’t wash those dishes till I got back to help. No fair if you do. I shan’t keep any of my promises unless you do. See?”

  “Sure!” responded the old lady with such a perfect imitation of Elim’s way of saying it that they all went off into gales of laughter, and the old lady, putting her frail white hands with their soft, white, frilly wrists comically on her slender hips said brightly, “Gee, but we’re all going to have a good time!”

  And so they went away on a ripple of laughter that might have been tears if it had not been for the old lady’s courage. The echo of the laughter rippled down the road, and perhaps a wave of it wafted into the windows of the Whipple house and made Dana stir uneasily in his morning dreams and start awake with the sensation of something pleasant and beloved passing by. Then sleep closed in once more and the old Ford passed on, without a lifted eyelash from Lynette or her mother, who was conspicuously arranging the scarf around her neck. And though Justine Whipple, whose eagle eye had spied the Ford and watched it spitefully from afar, studied its brief passage
eagerly, she could not make out who was in the backseat, nor how many, nor what for. It was most annoying.

  Elim drove the Ford back to its home by the valley road which was two miles around but had the double advantage of giving him a longer ride and of not passing the Whipple house. Dana’s letter was safely buttoned into the inner pocket of Elim’s coat. There was time enough for that he figured, even if Lynette had asked him to be very sure to deliver it at once. Well, he would, the first “at once” he had. He returned the Ford to its owner and slipped across lots to home, deciding to see how his grandmother was getting on and help her do the dishes before he went down to the Whipples’. He loathed going to Whipples’. He had once strung a line across the sidewalk in his younger days and had the misfortune to bring Justine Whipple sharply to the sidewalk with a turned ankle. Her remarks on that occasion had not endeared her to Elim Brooke. She had told him plainly what she considered him and left no doubt in his mind as to her opinion of his family and his upbringing. Elim bore her no grudge personally, because he knew that there was truth in what she had said, but his family was a different matter, and the grudge he bore her for them grew with his years. All the time he was wiping dishes with Grandmother Rutherford and talking cheerfully of the great times they would have reading Lynette’s letters, Elim was trying to think how he could put off delivering that letter until Justine went out, say, down to the post office, which she often did of a morning. It would be much easier to deliver it when Dana’s mother was at home alone to receive it. He didn’t mind Dana’s mother much, although he considered her far inferior to his own mother, and he resented the idea that she might someday be related to his sister.

  Neither did he relish handing Lynette’s letter to Dana himself, especially if that “egg of a flapper” as he called the visitor at the Whipples’, were present. It seemed a humiliation for Lynette to have to tell Dana she was going away.

  But while Elim polished glasses and silver and knit his brows over how to avoid his duty and yet remain loyal to his sister, he heard a car go by and hastened to the window in time to see Dana in his new car going up the road with the despised visitor by his side, smiling up into his willing face.

  Elim frowned blackly as he polished the plates and put them away elaborately in the china closet. Now he had done it! He had promised to deliver that letter at once, and Dana had gone away, probably for the morning. All indications pointed toward a picnic. His quick eye had noted the willow handle of a basket in the backseat and the nickel top of a thermos bottle.

  “Oh, bah!” he said under his breath as he thought how Lynette had gone out as bravely with her lunch basket the day before. His sister, and a girl with makeup on her face! One one day and the other the next! All the same to Dana! “Gee, I’d like to wallop him! Gee, I’m glad she’s gone!”

  But there was the letter, and there was his promise, and boy though he was mad he had been brought up on the Brooke conscience. He was bright enough, too, to see what Lynette must have had in mind, that if the letter were delivered at once, and Dana should want to do so, there was ample time for him to take the next train down to New York and persuade the lady of his heart—if she really was that—to give up her trip and return with him. Or at least to say good-bye and to apologize for his conduct of the evening before.

  “But he donno he even did that!” soliloquized the dish wiper. “The poor fish! He donno she even had a birthday!”

  When the dishes were all put away, Elim sauntered back into the kitchen where his grandmother was fussing around the stove.

  “Gee, Gramma! I gotta get that letter down ta Whipples’!” he said. “You stick around on the porch and read the newspaper till I get back, willya?”

  Elim slipped away and took his bicycle around the house, across the field, and through the fence, and was off like a streak down the road toward the post office. A solution to his difficulty had presented itself to him. He would post the letter! There was plenty of time to get it into the eleven o’clock delivery, and it would be at the house when Dana returned. If Dana did not return until evening that was his look out, wasn’t it? There would still be time for Dana to get to New York before the boat sailed if he wanted to do so!

  Elim reached the post office and made sure his letter got into the morning sorting. Then he streaked it home again and came nonchalantly in at the back door.

  “Now, Gramma! What are you doing?” he protested loudly. “Muth said you’d be up to some stunts if I didn’t look out. No sir, Gramma, you aren’t cleanin’ out that tin closet this time, not on yer life. Gimme that broom!”

  “But Elim, I saw a mouse run under the door.”

  “Domakenydiffrunce!” contended Elim. “I’m here to look out fer things like that. You go int’ the living room. I’ll ten’ to the mouse.”

  So Elim managed to turn the interest away from the letter, and it was not till several hours later in the day that Grandmother Rutherford remembered it and asked him, “Elim, did you remember to take that letter?”

  “Sure!” said Elim readily enough. “Don’t you remember you were killing a mouse when I got back?”

  And she was not the kind of grandmother who asked him who he saw and what they said.

  About two o’clock in the afternoon Mrs. Pettingill ran over with her sewing announcing her intention of staying till her folks came back on the five o’clock train, and Elim, feeling Gramma was in good hands, took his fishing rod and tin cans and wandered off for a while. He felt the need of a little relaxation after the strenuous day he had had. Not that he had done anything much. It was just the weight of the responsibility. Also, it had been a strain to keep an eye out for Dana’s return. But now it was late enough so that it no longer mattered, for the letter must be already at the house awaiting him, and Elim felt that he would just as soon be away for a little while in case Dana came over to find out more about Lynette. “Let Gramma handle him! Gramma was wise to the whole situation.”

  So with a free mind Elim went a fishing.

  Chapter 11

  Justine Whipple did not tell Dana that Lynette had called him up. She did not tell anyone that she had called. She would have enjoyed holding it over Amelia’s head like a lash as one more evidence that Lynette ran after Dana, but she would hold that in reserve for a time when it had been forgotten that she had not reported the call. At least she could tell him later in the day if it became necessary to save her face. It was easy to say she had forgotten or to pretend the call came after he left for the drive.

  So Dana Whipple went away into the brilliant embroidery of the June day, even as the day before, without an idea of the changes that were about to enter his well-planned life.

  The morning was perfect. That always put him in a pleasant mood. He somehow always had the attitude that bad weather was intended as a personal affront to himself, and he made everybody around him uncomfortable, as if they were personally responsible.

  But the day could not have been brighter. He felt no qualms that he was going in the same direction, and with the same eagerness, as he had gone the day before with the girl who was supposed to be going to be his wife someday. In fact there was a slight spice to this day in the fact that he was going without her, going with a distinctly different type of girl, and going on purpose to teach Lynette a much-needed lesson. And he meant to enjoy it while he was doing it. Of course he would be glad to get back to Lynn, and it gave him a sort of satisfaction to know that she was different from this brilliant, vapid creature by his side, but it was good to know that he could adapt himself to all kinds of girls. It flattered his pride that Jessie Belle seemed interested in him. He knew that he was good looking. Well, why not enjoy the day and sample this style of girl for an hour? She was only a child at most.

  Nevertheless, so strong was habit, that he felt a great desire to put aside his anger with Lynette for not going with them the night before and take her along on this drive. It seemed a pity for her not to go! And he had told Lynette they would take this ride toge
ther. In fact, hadn’t he said something about taking a ride this very day?

  And so keen was his desire to have Lynette go along, so proud his remembrance of her beauty as she had stood on the porch in the sunset, that had she been on the porch as they passed, or had any of the family been in sight, he would have hailed them and stopped for her.

  But the house stood silent and unpeopled, with that “not at home look” about it. Somehow Lynette’s silent rebuke of the last night seemed to hover about its quiet, shut-up air. The front door was closed, too. Surely they were up by this time! Half past nine! No, nearer ten! Very likely Lynn was gone down to the village on an errand, or perhaps in the garden, or off with Elim. He really must do something about Elim. Lynn ought to make him understand that he could not treat him like an equal in public. Calling out as if he were a kid! And presuming an intimacy because of his sister’s supposed relation. Not only was Elim’s greeting a trifle premature, as no engagement had as yet been announced, but it was offensive in itself. Elim acted as if they had been playmates at least. Elim must learn a certain respect due to position, too. But all that would come into the talk that he meant to have with Lynn that afternoon or evening.

  Out on the open road Jessie Belle pleaded to be taught to drive the car, and when they reached a reasonably smooth stretch, where there would not be likely to be much traffic, Dana changed seats with her and began to teach her.

  It was perhaps a miracle that they were not wrecked that morning, for Dana was new at driving himself and Jessie Belle was both hilarious and impulsive. They wobbled about all over the road, and Jessie Belle did a great deal of boisterous laughing over nothing and made a point of being frightened to death every few minutes and clinging to Dana in terror. This after the first shock was rather amusing to Dana. Of course, she was only a child, he told himself, just a child with charming, confiding ways.

  They stopped at a mountain top to look out over the trail, and Jessie Belle here took occasion also to slip her hand into Dana’s arm and cling. She said the great height, and the overwhelming space of valley and distance and mountains, frightened her and made her dizzy. She clung to him all the time they stood there gazing, but most of Jessie Belle’s gazing was up into Dana Whipple’s face rather than off to the eternal hills.