Beauty for Ashes (28 page)

Gloria, who had been present the night before and watched the struggle of the new convert before he actually surrendered, and who had been deeply impressed, looked at her sister in amazement. Was this Vanna, talking like that?

They drove on the mountaintop a good deal of the time till they reached a height where they could look off in the distance to the blue sea.

“Some day we’ll drive over to the shore,” said Murray. “It’s not such a long drive if you start at daylight. You can make it before noon, picnic on the shore, take a swim, and then come home by moonlight!” And he smiled at Gloria.

“That would be wonderful!” said both the girls in chorus.

“How Brand would love it up here!” said Vanna suddenly. “Poor Brand! He’s having a tough time of it this summer. His best friend has gone to Europe, and Dad wouldn’t let him go along. He thought he was too young for that sort of thing without the family. Mother’s worried a lot about his being home this summer. She wanted to send him to a camp, but he thinks he’s too old for that, and so he’s staying home running around with all sorts, and I don’t believe it’s any too good for him.”

“We must get him up here!” said Robert. “Would he come?”

“I think he’d love it!” said Gloria. “We haven’t seen much of Brand these last four years—he’s been off at military school, and I feel as if he was almost a stranger.”

“We’ll have to see what we can do about getting him up here,” said Robert with a glance at Vanna that brought the glad light to her eyes and the color to her cheeks. How wonderful it was going to be to have someone who was always interested in what was dear to her!

They found a pleasant place to take dinner, in a little wayside village, a big white house labeled T
EAROOM
.

After lunch they started back home another way.

“We’ll show them the falls, shall we, Murray?” said Robert.

So they presently penetrated a deep, sweet wood and parked their car away from the road in a thicket.

The ground was paved with pine needles. When they had gone to the brow of the hill where the way sloped down and an opening in the wood gave vision of rocks and a waterfall below, they stood to look and admire and exclaim.

“You have to go down the hill to get the full beauty of the falls,” said Murray. “Shall we go, Gloria?”

“Oh, yes,” said Gloria.

“I believe I’m lazy,” said Vanna. “Would you mind if I just sat down here and watched awhile?”

“I’m lazy, too,” Robert said, smiling and dropping down by her side. “We can see all the falls we need right from here, children. You go down and enjoy yourselves.”

So Murray slid his arm within Gloria’s, sliding his hand along to hold her hand firmly and support her elbow, and close together they went on down the slippery way until the pines hid them from view. The two sitting at the top of the hill watched and smiled and drew nearer together.

“Darling, isn’t it all wonderful?” asked Robert, looking at Vanna earnestly. “You’re not sorry, are you?”

“Sorry?” said Vanna, turning a gorgeous look upon Robert. “Do I look sorry?” Then she buried her glowing face in the shoulder he offered.

“I’ve been wondering,” said Robert, reaching out for Vanna’s hand and gathering it close in his, “how soon are we supposed to tell our wonderful news to the world? Isn’t it up to me to go down and see your father right away? I’ve been quaking at the thought, for what will he think of my presumption?”

“Father’s not hard to meet,” Vanna said with a smile, “and he’s quite simple in his requirements. Mother’s the hard one to please, but she generally succumbs to the inevitable. But I’ve been thinking. Dad ought to be up here pretty soon. He promised me when I came that he would get away as soon as he could. We might keep it to ourselves till he comes. Or maybe I’ll just tell Gloria. What do you think?”

“And Murray? Or would you rather not?”

“Oh, yes, of course, Murray!”

And while they sat leaning against a great tree trunk heaped over with pine needles discussing their precious secret, Gloria and Murray passed out of sight, down where the water was falling musically among the rocks, and moss and ferns grew everywhere, fringing the pool.

They found a mossy bank where hemlocks draped the entrance and sat down close together, looking up to the blue overhead, looking across to the waterfall that plunged over the great smooth rocks, listening to the drip of the water and the note of a far bird.

“This would be a lovely place to read the rest of that chapter you began on yesterday,” suggested Gloria, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.

Murray swept her a covert, endearing glance and pulled his New Testament out of his pocket. Soon they were deep into the greatest book in the world. Shoulder to shoulder they sat, their heads bent together, almost touching, the brown head and the gold with glints of sun upon them, touching them, each holding a side of the book, fingers glancing and touching now and again when the pages were turned, a thrill of wonder passing from one to the other, till finally a tender silence fell with only the tinkling of the water and the drowsy song of distant birds for a background of their thoughts, thoughts that had been busy with great questions of eternal values.

Their hands were still holding the book, close together, and there was sweet awareness of the contact, as if some power beyond their own volition was bringing their souls in closer touch. Gloria sat still and held her breath at the sweetness of the moment, not daring to move lest she break the dear spell, lest she should make him think she shrank from his touch, of which he seemed not perhaps to have noticed. Dear, this was, preciously dear, something delicately beautiful that she had not known before. She was afraid to stir, to think, lest it would be gone, and she wanted to hide it deep in her memory when a barren time might come.

But then he turned his gaze, which had been out across the valley to the dim blue hills of the distance, and looked tenderly into her eyes, deeply, intimately.

“Isn’t it sweet,” he said, “to read His Word together this way?’

“Oh, it is!” she answered him, a lovely light in her eyes.

He kept his look on her with that reverent, intimate, loving gaze, and slowly, softly, seeming scarcely to move, his hand beside hers stole around her head. The thrill of that clasp brought the sweet color into her face and a light into her eyes he had never seen there before. Then as he still looked deep into her eyes, they two seemed to be drawn together by some invisible bond till their lips met.

“I love you, Gloria!” he whispered, putting his other arm about her and drawing her close to his breast. “Oh, I love you, my dear! My dear!”

The little book was between them now, her hand in his, holding it. It seemed a lovely omen. She smiled as she lifted her lips to answer his kiss once more, and for a little while they forgot everything else but their two selves.

But presently Murray slipped the book back into his pocket and set their hands both free and, taking her face in his hands, lifted it and kissed her eyelids and the lovely spot on her forehead where the gold hair curled away in little rings.

“But you haven’t told me whether you can ever love me,” he said suddenly, holding her face back tip-tilted so he could look deep into her eyes again.

“Oh, you know I do!” she whispered and reached her lips to his again.

“My beautiful!” he murmured, drawing her close again.

Suddenly Gloria raised her head, and her hand stole back into his. “Murray,” she said softly, “this is so sweet, I can’t bear to break in upon it with a word, but—”

“What is it, sweet?” he answered tenderly, a note of apprehension breaking into his voice. “Have I been too soon? Have I jumped in where angels fear to tread? Don’t be afraid to tell me, dear! I would rather know the truth.”

“No, no, it is nothing like that,” she said bringing her other hand up to stroke his cheek softly. “No, I’m glad, glad, glad! So glad you love me and I love you. But there is something about me that you ought to know. I should have told you before, only—I never dreamed there would be any reason why it should matter. I didn’t dream of this wonderful thing coming.”

“Don’t tell me anything unless you want to, dearest!” he said gravely.

“But I want to,” said Gloria seriously, “and besides you would be sure to hear it sooner or later. I’d rather tell you myself.”

“Perhaps I know it already, dear!”

She gave him a startled look. “You didn’t know that I was to have been married a few days after I came up here, did you?”

Murray took her hand gravely and held it as he bowed his head. “Yes, I had heard that. Mother told me when I arrived. Mrs. Weatherby told her.”

“Oh!” breathed Gloria with relief. “But did she tell you the rest? Did you know that—my fiancé and a dancing girl were shot together in a nightclub in New York? Shot by the lover of the girl he was with?”

Murray nodded again and regarded her sadly, studying her face keenly, almost anxiously.

“You knew all that and yet you were kind to me!” she said almost wonderingly. “You, to whom all that mess must have been awful! It must have made you see what kind of a life I had lived that I was going to marry a man like that!”

“It made me see how much you must need my Lord Jesus!” he said, lifting her hand reverently and laying his lips on the tips of her fingers. “It sent me to my knees for you. I began to pray for you that first night I came, even before I had seen you. Oh, how my heart ached for you! Now that you have told me this, I can see that perhaps I ought not to have told you of my love yet. It is so soon since you have lost one you must have loved—”

“Don’t!” she said closing her eyes and drooping her head. “I don’t even think I ever loved him now, though I thought I did. I thought I was crazy about him. But he killed all that in me by what he did. It was as if everything had been nullified and I was left there alone having to appear to be brokenhearted when I was only shocked and disgusted. It was as if everything I had counted dear had been taken away from me, cut out like gangrene. I don’t even have dear memories to comfort me. He had made me loathe all the memories because I felt they never really had been mine!”

“Poor darling!” he said, tightening the pressure of his arm about her.

“Oh, it was never anything like this!” she said, suddenly putting her face down in his neck and beginning to cry. “This is like heaven! I did not know there could be such love as this, such peace and rest!”

“My precious sweetheart!” he said laying his lips on her bright hair.

“And the most beautiful part of it all is,” she said, raising her face for a moment all wet with her glad tears and wreathed in smiles like a rainbow, “you’ve shown me how to have rest and peace in my heart!”

It was then the passing shadow that her reference to her former engagement had brought to his eyes fled away entirely.

“That is the best of all that you have said, dearest!” he said, and his voice sounded like a hallelujah. “I don’t know what your parents are going to say when I tell them that I want to make you my wife. But I’m convinced that our God is with us and that He has given you to me as a life mate. I pray that I may be able always to make you happy and at rest and peace. My love, my precious Gloria!”

They came back up the hill at last to the others, his hand under her arm, helping her up the slippery steep, and she felt as if she were walking among beautiful clouds.

They made their way slowly home as the twilight came softly down, taking the meadow road as they were told, and finding a light burning steadily in the upper back window for them. So they came laughing in.

“Is he gone?” asked Gloria, peering around the corner of the doorway into the living room.

“Quite gone,” laughed Emily. “I think he is on his way to a diner and then home. He spoke about stopping in Boston.”

“What time did he come?”

“Why, about a half hour after you left,” said Emily, “that is, the first time. I told him you were out. I wasn’t sure when you’d be back.

“The first time!” said Vanna. “Did he come more than once?”

“Three times,” said John Hastings, grinning from the kitchen door. “The first time he sat in his car sulking, and when we didn’t ask him for dinner, he went away and said he’d be back. Then he came again at three o’clock and Emily served him a glass of spring water and said she hadn’t heard anything from you.”

“Then he went off again and said he’d be back at five,” put in Emily, “and I put out the country newspaper and the Bible and told him to sit on the porch and make himself comfortable. Of course it was possible you might be home for supper at five thirty. He waited till almost six, and then he knocked on the door and asked if there wasn’t someplace he could telephone you, but I said you didn’t say where you were going when you went off with a party of friends. Of course, I said, you had relatives around the state and you might have stopped off there, but I couldn’t tell him how to get there.”

“I am so sorry that you had to bother,” said Vanna.

“Oh, it was fun,” said Emily. “When it began to get so late, he got up and came into the kitchen where I was frying apples to ask me questions. He said you had got offended at something last night and had left him, and he was worried about you. He wanted to know had you really come home, or didn’t we know where you were? Because if you were lost, he must hunt you. I looked surprised at him and said oh, no, you got home all right. You caught a train and one of your friends went down in a car and met you, and that seemed to make him furiously mad, so he turned around and walked out to the porch and called back to me to tell you he would wait now until he heard from you before he came again.”

Vanna laughed happily. “Well, he’ll wait a long time,” she said with a glad look at Robert.

Then they sat down to the hearty supper that Emily had waiting for them.

T
he next evening, just as they were coming in from prayer meeting, there came a telephone call from Mrs. Sutherland. Vanna went to answer it. “Emory Zane surely can’t have got home yet, can he?” she said to her sister as she went toward the phone.