Beauty for Ashes (4 page)

“I myself will explain!” said the father, and Gloria gave him a grateful look and leaned wearily back in the car.

When Gloria reached home, she went up and took off her black dress, putting on a plain old frock of white silk with touches of yellow in the trimming. It was a dress she had often played golf in. Then she sat down at her window and looked out at the sunset light on the lawn, touching the forsythia and the tulips with gold and flaming beauty. She laid her tired head down on her hands on the windowsill and wondered how things could go on just the same in spite of pain and shame and sorrow. It was a lovely world, yet she could find no joy in it. She almost envied the unhurt youth of her brother who came to kiss her good-bye before he started back to school.

But when she went downstairs to dinner, where she knew her presence would be required or a fuss would be made about her not eating enough, her mother lifted horrified eyebrows at her garments.

“Why, Gloria! How unseemly! This first night of all times! Suppose somebody should come in! And what will the servants think? Run right back dear, and get on your black dress!”

Gloria looked wearily protesting at her mother’s words, and once more her father interfered. “She looks much better in that,” he said. “Let her be! She has suffered enough for one day.”

“There you go again, Charles,” said his wife haughtily, “trying to decide a question you don’t in the least understand!”

“That’s all right, Adelaide,” said the father gravely, “perhaps you don’t understand just how little strength this child has left after the ordeal of the day.”

“And why wouldn’t I understand my child as well as you, I would like to know?” said his wife. “I, her mother! You’re absurd. You always were sentimental, and you always encouraged her in such ideas. I’d like to know what terrible ordeal there was today? It was just a perfect funeral from start to finish. Not a detail went wrong. The flowers were marvelous. Did you see those white orchids? Weren’t they the most exquisite things? And not a hitch or mistake anywhere. Not an unsightly moment. Everything just moved on oiled wheels! And Stanwood looked so perfectly natural, just as if he were going to laugh right out at us all! I’m sure I thought it was a lovely funeral!”

“You would!” said Vanna under her breath.

“What did you say, Vanna? I do wish you would stop that habit of talking in such a low tone that no one can hear you. It’s very rude indeed!” said her mother.

“Excuse me, Mother!” said Vanna, dropping her eyes to hide her indignation. She knew that Gloria was being tortured.

“Couldn’t we just forget it for a while, Adelaide?” said her husband with a sigh. “We don’t all feel that way about it. We’re tired out. It’s been a hard strain, and we want to eat our dinner now.”

“Well, really, am I hindering you from eating your dinner? I’m sorry. But it strikes me that it isn’t something we want to forget right away. There’s a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that the best people were there, and that there is nothing to regret in the service. I’m sure it must be a great satisfaction to Stanwood’s parents to know how their friends honored him. I never saw such quantities of flowers at any funeral anywhere. It seems to me that the time to talk it over is now while it is fresh in our minds, and that reminds me, Charles, did you see the Breckenridges anywhere? I looked all over for them when we came out but couldn’t seem to find them. They sent such a perfectly lovely wedding gift, that old English sterling platter, you know, that I was sure they’d be at the funeral. It seems strange if they weren’t.”

But Mrs. Sutherland had her meditations to herself, for the family ate in silence for the most part, and Gloria, after a very few bites, excused herself and went up to her room, wondering if life was ever going to be bearable again.

But even her mother was startled the next morning at her white face with the great dark circles under her eyes.

“We’ve certainly got to get out of this town right away as soon as we can manage it,” she announced when the breakfast was well under way and the servants had withdrawn for the time. “I’ve been thinking. We’d better go to Europe. There’s nothing like Europe for diverting the mind and getting away from curious people, and of course it’s going to be awfully hard on Gloria being in mourning and not being able to go out at all. Charles, couldn’t you get away, for a few weeks anyway, right off? You could at least take us over and get us settled in some nice, pleasant central place where we could take little trips off here and there, and then you could come back if you had to for a while. I thought we’d be able to get off by next week if you could. Of course there’ll be a few more clothes to buy since we must all go into black at least for a while.”

Gloria looked up most unexpectedly and spoke. She had done very little speaking for the last few days. “I’m not going into mourning, Mother,” she said, “and I’m not going to Europe! The rest of you can go if you want to, but I’m not going!”

“Why, Gloria, what on earth do you mean? Of course you’ll have to go into mourning! And why should you say you won’t go? You don’t realize what you’ll be up against if you try to stay here. Everybody in the town will be watching you and pitying you, and you can’t turn around but it will be in the paper. You’ve got to let this thing die down and be forgotten before you can comfortably live here.”

“It doesn’t matter!” said Gloria indifferently. “I’m not going to Europe!”

“But don’t you realize what you will be doing to your sister if you insist on staying here? Of course we couldn’t think of going off and leaving you behind as you suggest. How would that look? And poor Vanna would be as much tied down as you would. She would be under the shadow of your sorrow, don’t you see?”

“Why couldn’t you and Vanna go to the seashore as you had intended?” said Gloria, giving her mother a pleading look.

“And you stay here? What would people think of us for leaving you all alone?”

“I could go somewhere but not to any places like that!” said the girl determinedly.

Then her father spoke. “Where would you like to go, child?”

Gloria lifted sorrowful eyes to his face. “I—hadn’t thought!” she said listlessly.

“Hm! I guess you hadn’t!” sniffed her mother. “That’s just it! You hadn’t thought! You’re not used to thinking for yourself. I’ve always done it for you, and you’re not fit to begin planning for yourself now, I’m sure, not in this crisis.”

“Wait a minute, Mother,” said her husband interrupting. “Daughter, tell me, what was your idea? What do you think you would like?”

Gloria looked out the long french window down the terrace to the banks of blue and purple and rose and white hyacinths. Then her eyes brightened wistfully. “I’d like it if you and I could get in the car together and go somewhere riding for a while, away somewhere in a quiet place where most people don’t go. I’d like to go where there’s quiet—and woods and no crowds or social duties.”

“We’ll do it!” said her father earnestly. “When can you be ready to start?”

“Charles!” said his wife reprovingly. “Why will you encourage her in her crazy ideas? You know she’s not fit to decide now.”

But Gloria’s eyes were on her father. “Oh,
today!”
she said eagerly. “I could get ready in an hour or so!”

“Gloria!” said her mother. “You couldn’t possibly go anywhere today. You haven’t but two black dresses, and your things are not in order for a journey.”

“I don’t need many things, and I don’t want any more new ones!” said the girl. “I’ve been doing nothing for the last year but buying clothes and trying them on and having them fitted, and this is one thing I don’t have to dress for. I’m only going to take along simple old things that I know I’ll be comfortable in, and I’m not going to take a single black dress along! It won’t take long to pack!”

“Run along then and pack, Glory!” said her father. “I’ll phone down to the office and make arrangements to leave. We’ll start off somewhere around noon. Get the cook to put up some sandwiches for us, and we’ll eat them by the roadside.”

“Charles! How plebeian!” exclaimed his wife. “Have you forgotten that every newspaper in this region will have Gloria’s picture in it? Yes, and yours too if one could judge from the way the cameras were crowded nearby yesterday. People will recognize you wherever you go, and what would they think to see you eating sandwiches by the roadside? A picnic right after a funeral!”

“Nobody is going to recognize us where we’re going, Adelaide. Run along, child, and get ready as soon as you can! Vanna, can you take care of your mother for a while?” There was eagerness in his eyes and voice. His wife looked at him as if he were insane.

“Charles! You simply can’t do a thing like that to us all! It is preposterous. Why, you’re crazy! Gloria owes a debt to her fellow townspeople! A social debt.”

“I don’t see for what!” said her husband, drinking the last swallow of his coffee and beginning to fold his napkin.

“Why, all those wedding presents for one thing. They’ll have to be sent back, of course, and she’ll have to be here to attend to them and write notes and everything.”

“Yes? Well, that’s all the more reason why I mean to get her away right off this morning. That child is not going through any more harrowing scenes for a while. She’ll have a nervous breakdown before another week if she does. Do you know she hasn’t cried a tear yet? Do you know that’s a dangerous state to be in?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the mother complacently. “It’s just that Gloria is a very self-controlled girl. I brought her up not to cry over things!”

But Gloria was up in her room working fast. She did not even wait for a maid to help her. She was getting out her overnight bag and suitcase, flinging in a few necessities, toiletries, accessories, plain sports clothes, rooting out old favorites that she had not been wearing lately since her engagement was announced because her mother had said she was too much in the public eye to go around in clothes that were out-of-date. She didn’t put in a single black dress. White and yellow and brown, a couple of knit dresses for cool days, a coat, and a plain little hat.

When her mother, having lost her argument with her husband and having given her orders for the day to the cook and her social secretary, finally hurried upstairs to deal with her recalcitrant daughter, she found Gloria cloaked and hatted and gloved, sitting by her window with her two bags on the floor at her feet, watching for her father’s car to come around.

“Gloria, you’re hurting me very much by your strange actions,” began her mother, sitting down and surveying the rebel.

“I’m sorry, Mother, but I
have
to get away right off. I have to get away from people!”

“You’re a strange child! One would suppose you would want to be with your own mother and sister! Now, while you’re in trouble, one would suppose you would confide in your own mother!”

Gloria turned despairing eyes on her parent. “Mother, you just don’t understand!” she said desperately. “I’ve got to get somewhere away from everything. I’ll come back sometime when I get my bearings, but I won’t go to Europe nor into society. I’ve got to get away from those things and find out what it all means!”

“What do you mean, ‘what it all means’?”

“I don’t know what I mean, but I’ve got to. I’ve stood this horror as long as I can. It’s been terrible!”

“Gloria, do you think Stan would like you to do a strange thing like this? Wouldn’t he expect you to stay here for a few days at least and help comfort his mother and keep up appearances?”

Gloria’s eyes narrowed. “Mother, Stan isn’t to be considered anymore! That’s over!”

“Why, Gloria, what a terrible thing to say. When you just adored Stan and wanted to do everything you could to please him! Why look how hard you worked on your father to get him to build a bar in your new house just because Stan wanted one.”

Gloria’s face hardened. “Yes, and now I wish I hadn’t,” she said half fiercely. “If Stan hadn’t been so fond of drinking, he might not be dead today!”

“Glory! What a shocking thing to say! Stan never drank to excess. I always felt he was very abstemious. And surely you want to comport yourself as he would want you to do!”

“No,” said Gloria, “I don’t! I don’t think he has any right over my actions now. I think he forfeited his right by going up to New York and taking that dancing girl out to dinner the very week before we were to be married! He has made me feel that nothing he ever said to me was really mine anymore.”

“Why, you silly child! What a perfectly extravagant idea! You poor child, you take after your father! He’s always getting such ridiculous notions in his head! But Gloria dear, you mustn’t make so much of that incident. Even if it were all true what the papers said, which of course it isn’t, why, that isn’t a great thing. Most men have been a little wild before they settle down to get married and had little affairs with girls that they wouldn’t have married, for a fortune.”

“Mother! You don’t mean that! You know Father never was a man like that!”

“Well, no,” said the mother with a half-contemptuous smile. “Your father of course is an exception. He always had a puritanical conscience, and his bringing up was purely Victorian of course.”

Gloria lifted her chin a bit haughtily. “Well, if you don’t mind, Mother, I think I’ll be Victorian after this like Dad! You know it makes a difference when it really happens to
you
, Mother! You’ve always had a wonderful husband and lived a sheltered life, Mother, and you don’t understand, I—Mother, I
know!
It’s happened to me, and it makes all the difference in the world!”

Then Gloria heard her father’s voice calling from the hall to know if she was ready, and she jumped up and flung her arms around her bewildered, indignant mother’s neck.

“Dear Mother!” she said, kissing her fervently. “I’m dreadfully sorry to hurt you, but I really have to go now and find out how to stand things. You don’t understand, but I love you!”

“But what shall I tell Stan’s mother?” asked the still-indignant mother.

“Tell her I was about to get sick and Dad had to take me away for a few days. Good-bye, Mother!” And with a little wave of her hand and a faint attempt at a smile, she, without waiting for a servant, seized her two bags and was gone down the stairs and out the door.