Girl to Come Home To (25 page)

“But, after all, Jessica,” said Louella, “isn’t that something like what you did, sending Rodney’s nice pretty ring back to him and marrying another man?”

“Well, I sent it back, didn’t I? I didn’t keep it, though I wish I had. I may go and ask him for it. I wonder if he has it in the bank. See if you can find that out for me, Louella.”

D
iana walked all the way home instead of taking the bus as she usually did after shopping. Somehow she wanted to be alone to think and not be herded in a bus with a lot of other people to distract her thoughts. She felt as if she had been struck sharply or had a shocking fall and didn’t want even to think for a few minutes, till some of the pain was past.

She was thankful that the way she had chosen had very little traffic and few pedestrians. She walked rapidly, as it seemed easier that way, but when she came to the park that was across the road and only a block below the Sanderson home, she turned sharply into it and sought out the bench where she had often gone to read when Beryl was busy or away at the Red Cross for her mother.

There was no one there now, and the sunshine was shimmering through the lacy hemlock boughs that were planted behind it. She sat down under the shadow at the end of the bench and drew a relieved breath, feeling as if she had reached a real refuge. For an instant she just sat and looked out over the lovely scene and tried to realize that she was no longer under the fire of that awful girl’s eyes, her look of contempt and challenge. Then the memory of it all rolled over her like a great wave of trouble and fairly took her breath away.

She dropped her face into her lifted hands, her head bowed over, and if she hadn’t been still so conscious of the great world outside that might at any moment step into the picture, she certainly would have groaned. The whole matter seemed so utterly sordid and humiliating. To think any girl would dare to talk to another as that girl had done. Real trouble she was in, and she had no one to go to. She would be ashamed to tell Beryl or her mother, and as for her own mother, even if she were home and she might go to her at once, her mother would only be very angry and annoyed with her. She had stayed away against her advice and laid herself open to gossip and criticism.

Somehow the only one she wanted to go to with her trouble was Rodney Graeme, and of course she couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t for the world have Rodney know a thing like this. It seemed to put a great blight upon her soul, a great insult to her life, which she had always hoped was sweet and clean. She felt as if she had suddenly fallen into pitch and did not know how to get rid of its stains. If only there were somebody to whom she dared talk! But the only one who came to her mind as possible was Rodney, and that was impossible. Perhaps she never could talk to him again. And there would be his sweet mother, too, but of course she wouldn’t have her know for anything in the world that a girl like that would dare to talk to her the way Jessica had talked.

Then suddenly there came to her, like a voice speaking quietly behind her: “
Fear thou not; for I am with thee … I will help thee
.” Where did that come from? Out of her childhood past, or out of the meeting where Jeremy had spoken, or had she heard Rodney repeat it lately? Why, surely that was the verse Rodney had used among others when he was telling her about the Lord, and it reminded her at once that she need not cast about for someone to comfort and help her. She had a new Helper, a Lord who cared, and who had promised to be with her everywhere. She had no need to go to earthly friends, to men and women, or even her girlfriend. There was One closer to her now. Who would understand fully. Before whom she need never feel humiliated, even though He and she both knew she was a sinner. But He had taken that sin upon Himself, for her sake.

Then she remembered how she had once before cried unto the Lord in trouble and He had helped her, smoothed her troubles all out without any effort on her part. Would He do it again?

So she prayed, “Oh, my dear new Lord, I am in trouble again, and no one to help but You. I can’t do anything about it myself. Won’t You please take over? I don’t understand why this thing has come upon me. Was it something I did wrong? But somehow I’m sure You can make it right. And if there is something I should do, please show me what it is, and give me guidance now, and strength. And now, please help me to go back to the house and the hours that are ahead and not act frightened. I will trust You all the way and listen for Your guidance. Thank You. Amen.”

She remained with bowed head for a moment, and it seemed to her she felt a hand upon her head, laid there in blessing and a promise. And again came that voice from far away, back down the ages, and yet, as if the words were just spoken.
“Fear … not … I will help thee.”

A moment more and then Diana lifted her head, and the trouble and burden seemed to be gone. God was there, and what
she
could not, He would do for her.

She brushed her hair back from her hot face, straightened her hat, and got up, gave one glance around the quiet park, and then started briskly back to the house. It did not matter now what that girl had said, what she had threatened to do. God would take care of that for her. What a wonderful thing was this that Rodney had done for her, whether she ever saw him again or not! Whether his steps ever crossed her path again, that was in God’s hands, too, but at least she would always be glad that she had known him and that he had introduced her to God. Perhaps in heaven they could talk it over, but maybe by that time all this would be as if it had not been. Just like that trouble with her mother and Bates Hibberd. It might go away. Of course there might be more of that coming to her again when she got back to New York, but God had helped her once. He could and would surely help her whenever the time came that she needed help.

So she went smiling into the house with a real glad light in her eyes, not any artificial smile either, but a smile of resting and trusting.

But over in her own room, not many miles away, Jessica was fretting and fuming.

For three long days she waited for her chance to get it back on this little indifferent New Yorker whom she hadn’t been able to down with the most bitter and unpleasant words she could find. She had gone each morning early to the Graeme house, telling Mother Graeme that she simply
must
see Rodney at once, and gotten the same answer, that he had not yet returned. And she knew no more of what was to be his orders now than she had known when Jessica was there before.

“Well, then, you’ll have to give me his address, Mamma Graeme. I’ve simply got to ask him some questions. I’ve got an order to write an article, and I told my editor that I had a friend just returned from service, and I would get some local coloring for him, and I’ve only a few more days to get this article in, so please give me his address.”

“But I don’t know what it is, Jessica,” said Margaret Graeme, glad in her heart that she didn’t know. “You see, the boys know that I understand I mustn’t worry if I don’t hear. I’ve been through months and months of that, you know, and so have they, and they would be sure I would wait and know that they would write as soon as they had anything definite that they had a right to tell.”

“But they are not overseas now, you know.”

“No, I wouldn’t know that for sure. You know, the war needs are peculiar and changeable. They might have been sent right off to the Pacific, without a chance to either telephone or write. They would feel that I would understand. But then again they may be returning tonight or tomorrow or even sometime today. They’ll come when they come,” and she smiled quietly with a faith that was used to trusting her very life to God.

But that utter trust only made Jessica angry. “You’re the most unfeeling mother I ever saw,” she snapped, “or else you’re holding out on me for some reason.”

“Why, no,” said Margaret Graeme, “I’m not holding out on you. I just haven’t the information you want, that’s all.”

But Jessica had slammed away and gone over to Louella’s hotel to blame her. She was due to report to her husband either by letter or in person in three days, and as yet she hadn’t got anywhere, except to blast Diana, which though it gave her personal satisfaction, had left a great uneasiness because she couldn’t interpret aright her reaction. She had never seen a girl react to an insult as Diana had done, and with apparently no after-climax of retaliation, and she was constantly fearing what form it might take when it did come. For she was sure a girl with spirit enough to have such steady poise to walk out on an insult, head up, shoulders back, must have initiative enough to bring a real sting when she finally decided to act. So she watched and planned and tried to bully Louella into doing something drastic. She hadn’t been even able to find out whether she had driven Diana back to New York yet, or if she was still at the Sandersons.

But at last the boys came home again, arriving on the late train Saturday night, to stay just over Sunday, they told their mother as they kissed her joyously. And from that embrace she gathered that their news was good, whatever it was. She could wait till they told her.

The news of their arrival got around the town by way of Bonny Stewart, whose brother spent much of his time hanging around the station, especially at the time of the arrival of the late trains, hoping to pick up an extra dollar or two conveying late passengers to their homes to build up his depleted bank account.

In due time the word got around to Jessica, by way of several of the other girls, and she lost no time in going to the Graeme house, but found them of course all gone to church.

“The very idea!” she said to Hetty, who had informed her. “I should have supposed they would have stayed at home together if the boys are going away again. A strange kind of a mother they have that she would let them go to church and go herself when they may be going away again, perhaps never to come back.”

“Dat’s mostly de case wif everyone,” said Hetty wisely. “When you go out an’ away you can’t say if you’ll ever come back again. But dat ain’t sayin’ you shouldn’t go right on livin’ de best you can. But dat’s how it is. If you want’s ta see dem boys, you’d best go ta church yourself.”

Very angry at this, Jessica walked out but decided on the way to the gate that she would go to church and hold up Rodney,
make
him walk home with her, and show the town who had him now. So she went to church.

She entered noisily and took a back seat, and the first sight she saw was the Graeme family all sitting together in their usual pew. Later her eyes wandered to the other side of the church, and there sat the Sandersons, with that Diana in their midst! The effrontery of her. After all she had said to her to think she would dare come to a public place and appear with Rodney’s friends. Well, she would settle that once and for all. She would get hold of Rodney before any of them and make him promise to walk home with her. He simply couldn’t say no, or get out of it in public this way.

So while the last words of the benediction were still echoing in the air, and while the soft tones of the organ began to play for the close of service, Jessica was halfway up the aisle, marching straight to the Graeme pew and making everyone turn and stare wondering if someone had died or something strange had happened. Jessica had not been seen with the Graemes for several years, yet there she was leaning over Father Graeme and Mother Graeme, to speak most earnestly to Rodney. Well, that was something to look at and mistake!

“Rod,” she said with her sweetest smile, recalling with her tone the days when he would always spring to do her bidding, “will you please walk home with me? I have something very important to tell you, and it won’t wait. And can you come at once, so I won’t take too much of your precious time?”

She was waiting, still leaning over the Graemes, effectually blocking the way for them to get out into the aisle. Margaret Graeme’s heart almost skipped a beat as she heard the request made of her boy. Just how would he handle this matter? Then the assurance came back to her eyes and she knew that God was managing this affair as well as the war, and she might relax and just trust.

But Father Graeme’s face was stern and his jaw grim. Most of his fellow Christians could tell pretty well how he felt about the matter, for well they knew that expression and didn’t care to get into any argument with him when he looked like that. Then they all looked quickly at Rodney, especially Jeremy, who was just beyond his brother at the other end of the seat, and his eyes were both stern and anxious.

But Rodney had a calmness about him that his brother knew was not his own. Jeremy felt he had just been praying.

Rodney gave Jessica one sharp, stern, searching glace, and then he let his lips relax, and he answered in a pleasant voice that all around could hear, “That would be quite impossible, Mrs. De Groot. Someone is waiting for me with a car, and I have to leave at once. Mother, Dad, will you kindly let me pass? I promised not to be late,” and though Jessica put on an act of trying to detain him—“But oh, Rod, this is most important! Then when
can
I see you? Sometime today?”—he brushed by her brusquely and went marching down the aisle, smiling at everybody but getting quite away.

And though she did her best to follow him up for just one other word, trying to think which ugly truth she could convey briefly to fling at him, she only arrived at the church steps in time to see Rodney assisting Diana into the backseat of the Sanderson car and sitting down beside her. So, that was the way it was, was it? That girl hadn’t taken her warning, and now she was due to get her full punishment. Well, she, Jessica, would do her worst. She would go to the Sandersons’ and ask to see him. He surely couldn’t get away then. And she would tell him all she knew, and more that she had made up, about that girl Diana.

Jeremy watched her from afar, but she wasn’t noticing Jeremy. The fire was in her eyes, and he knew she meant to do mischief. He had watched her too many years, to protect his brother, not to know what her expressions portended.