Beauty for Ashes

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Then they were gone, down the highway, out into a world that the father used to know and hadn’t seen for a long, long time.

  Chapter 3

  Mrs. Sutherland had managed to quash the sandwich idea from the day’s scheme of things, so about one o’clock the travelers began to get very hungry, for breakfast had been but a sketchy affair for both of them.

  They lunched at a quiet little roadside place the like of which Gloria had never entered before, so plain and quiet that it wasn’t even a tearoom. It was just a little cottage by the roadside with a sign out by the white gate: HOMEMADE BREAD SANDWICHES, FRIED EGG OR CHICKEN.

  It was a revelation to Gloria to enter that tiny cottage. It seemed scarcely big enough to be a bird cage, yet she discovered that it housed five people, a man and his wife, a little girl of eight years, another of three with gold curls almost the color of Gloria’s, and a boy of ten who came whistling in from the barn with a basket of eggs.

  The cold chicken was delicious, great flaky slices, and the bread was a dream. Mr. Sutherland said it tasted just like his mother’s, the fried eggs were cooked just right, and the butter was something to be remembered. The little eight-year-old girl proudly said that she had helped to churn it. There was a pitcher of creamy milk. It didn’t somehow taste like city milk, though the Sutherland milk always came from a herd of specially selected cows.

  Gloria was hungry for the first time since the tragedy. Mr. Sutherland talked with the mother. She told him that they had lived there five years, ever since her husband had failed in business. He had taken what little he had left, come up here into the woods, and cleared this land that an uncle had left him. They were getting on all right till her husband broke his leg. So now she had to do something to help out with the doctor’s bills. But they were going to get on all right. The leg was knitting nicely and the doctor was willing to wait, and the children were selling vegetables in the next little town. It was only two miles away, and the boy had a small express wagon. Sometimes his sister went with him. They were doing very well and were thankful that things were no worse.

  Gloria gave a startled look around on the cheap furnishings of the little front parlor that had been turned into a wayside inn. She caught a glimpse of the kitchen beyond and a bedroom opening out of it where a man lay on the bed with a weight attached to his foot to keep the leg in position. Could anybody live in such crowded quarters and really be happy? Thankful that it was no worse? She thought of her own lovely home, which she had known most of her life.

  “It isn’t as if we had to live in the city,” said the mother happily. “This is a nice, healthy place for the children, and we can raise most everything we really need to eat, and of course we don’t require fine clothing.” Her voice had a lilt in it, and there was a dimness in Mr. Sutherland’s eyes as he paid the modest bill.

  “You don’t charge enough for such wonderful food!” he said and threw down another bill on the table as he picked up his hat and hurried out.

  “Oh, but—” said the mother, examining the money. “This is too much! My price covers the cost and gives us enough. We really couldn’t take this!” She followed them out to the car.

  “It’s all right!” said Gloria’s father, putting his foot on the starter. “Tell your husband that’s just from one brother to another. I used to be a farmer’s boy myself once, and I know times can get pretty hard. I’d like to think of you here getting on. Sometime maybe I’ll come back again!” He threw in his clutch and was off, leaving the bewildered little mother standing at the gate clutching the bill and staring after them as if they were a couple of fairies riding in a coach.

  “Oh, Dad, I’m glad you did that!” said Gloria, leaning her cheek lovingly against his shoulder. “They’re sweet, aren’t they? And they’re happy, too, in spite of everything!”

  “There are lots worse fates than living in a little cottage in the woods,” said the father musingly. “When I was a little tad, we had a house as near like that as two peas, and Father and Mother were happy as two clams.”

  “Oh, Dad, you never told us about that!”

  “Well,” said her father musingly, “there never was any time to tell about things, not since you were born. We always had so much going on in the house, and you were so governessed and nurse-ridden and kindergartened and schooled while you were growing up that I scarcely ever got a chance at you. And then later, you had such a gang of hangers-on at the house! I’ve always wanted to. But how could I expect you’d want to hear about a little cottage on a big farm where I was born?”

  “Oh, tell me now,” said Gloria, settling back comfortably. “Only I’m sorry Vanna isn’t along. She would enjoy it, too! I guess we should have brought her, only that would have left Mother all alone and she wouldn’t have stood for that a minute!”

  “No,” said the father sadly, “I guess not. But I don’t know as there is so much to tell. Perhaps you wouldn’t understand it all either. It was different from these days.”

  “Different? How?” asked Gloria. “Tell me all about it, please!”

  “Why, we were just a family by ourselves. Of course there were neighbors who came sometimes to call, but mostly we did things together and were just a family. Outside things weren’t always crowding in. And then our ways were different. My people were religious. We always went to church every Sunday twice and sometimes three times, though it was a long ride, and sometimes the ride was a walk when a horse was lame. Father never missed a Sunday if he could help it. But times have changed!” He ended with a sigh, almost as if he regretted it.

  “It seems strange that you were brought up that way, Dad, and now you never go near a church,” said his daughter thoughtfully, trying to make her father’s tale seem real.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” said the man, looking off into the distance. “I suppose my mother would have felt terribly about it if she had lived to see these days. Why, my father used to ask a blessing at the table before every meal, and we always had family prayers every morning and evening. We’ve come a long way from such doings.”

  Their way led now through a lovely woodland with pleasant little villages sprinkled here and there. The father had chosen the back roads purposely to get away from traffic. Everything was new and different from the regular highway to which Gloria was accustomed. Cultivated nature and beautiful scenery were a familiar, everyday thing to her since babyhood, but nature in the wild, just nature, and human nature bearing the hardships of life, taking toil and deprivation happily and struggling to overcome the curse that was upon the soil and humanity, she had not seen before, or if she had seen it, she had not noticed. Now that her eyes were opened by her own first suffering, everything seemed different.

  They passed some little children going out to a barn with their older brother to feed the pigs. Gloria watched the struggling, snorting, grunting, slimy creatures fighting each other for the best morsels, seeing no connection between them and the great Virginia hams that appeared on the home table succulent and tender, spicy with cloves, and wearing rings of pineapple on their velvety brown crust. She wondered why people cared to bother with such loathsome creatures as pigs, till her father suddenly remarked that it used to be his duty to feed the pigs every day when he was a boy, and how proud he was when they grew fat and marketable.

  Gloria’s eyes got larger as she listened. She was seeing a side of life that she had never before even dreamed of. Her father feeding pigs! She thought of the three stately peacocks that strutted sometimes on the terraces at home, a fancy of her mother’s they had been, and suddenly she laughed aloud.

  Her father looked down anxiously at her and then joined in, a sudden light of relief in his eyes. Gloria had forgotten her sorrow for the moment and had laughed! He laughed himself at the thought of himself a little barefoot boy going out to the barn with a bucket of refuse for the pigs. It was incongruous. He thought of himself in his bonding office in the city managing affairs of finance that often settled national questions. And yet he ha
d been a barefoot boy feeding pigs and chickens and milking the cow!

  “If I had known then that things would change so,” he said gravely and then laughed once more. “If I could have looked forward and seen myself in the office, handling important affairs—” He paused again and looked down at Gloria.

  “Well, what?” said Gloria breathlessly. “What would you have done?”

  “Why, I expect,” said her father thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t have been so conscientious about feeding the pigs! I’m afraid I wouldn’t have thought that it was worthwhile to bother if I was going to be rich in the end.”

  “And was it?” asked the daughter, drawing her brows together. “Wouldn’t it have been better to let someone else who wasn’t going to amount to anything afterward feed the pigs, and you spend your time in getting ready to be a great businessman?”

  “No,” said her father, thoughtfully shaking his head. “It might be that if I hadn’t done my best feeding the pigs and doing all the other duties that were required of me, I wouldn’t ever have been in the position I am now!”

  “Father! How could you make that out?”

  “Why, I had to learn responsibility and honesty and diligence and reliability and regularity and conscientiousness somewhere, and I guess in my case feeding the pigs was just as good a way to learn those things as any. Another thing, I had to learn to do things I didn’t like to do. You know I never did really like to feed pigs, though I wouldn’t have owned it for a farm. It wasn’t considered good sportsmanship to give in to one’s likes and dislikes.”

  Gloria sat quietly considering that for some time.

  They changed places after a while, Gloria taking the wheel, and they drove on into the lovely afternoon among the mountains with now a glimmering lake lying like silver in the distance, now a river winding. They did not touch New York nor anything that could have reminded Gloria of that city. They went by byways not highways, taking a road when it looked attractive, whether it went in a special direction or not. Deep into the heart of a woods they would wander, and out again into a little settlement, so out of the way that the dwellers hadn’t even thought to put out a TOURISTS sign, so quiet that it seemed almost like a deserted village.

  Many places they passed reminded her father of his childhood, and seeing she enjoyed it, he talked on freely. It seemed that he, too, took pleasure in going back over those old days. It had been so many years since he had anyone to talk to about them. Adelaide, his wife, had always been restless when he mentioned his early days and upbringing. She had been a Boston girl and considered herself above him, even though he did bring her more wealth than she ever had before.

  It was not until the shades of evening began to drop down and seem to wrap them in more cozily to each other, that Gloria, after quite a silence, ventured hesitantly, “Dad, is it true that all men nowadays—that is all young men nowadays are—well— aren’t quite true? I mean, do they all go after—low-down girls and think nothing of it? Even if—they’re—going to be married?”

  Her father gave her a startled look. “Certainly not!” he said decidedly. Then he stopped short and tried to think what young men of his acquaintance he could be sure of. “Certainly not,” he repeated with satisfaction. “I have in mind several who are not in the least that way.”

  But he suddenly remembered that they were not young men in Gloria’s clique. They were plain, hardworking young fellows in his office, and he knew their ways, had had them shadowed before ever he trusted them with important business.

  “Whatever put such a question as that into your head?” he asked, turning keen eyes and searching her through the dusk.

  “Why, Mother said they all were,” said Gloria, struggling to explain. “Mother laughed at me when I said I felt as though Stan had never been mine because of his going up to New York to that girl—” Her voice trailed off into silence, and she turned her eyes to the woods they were passing through.

  “Poor child!” said her father tenderly, reaching out a hand to touch hers softly as it guided the wheel. The tone of his voice made Gloria catch her breath as she went on.

  “And Mother said that was silly of me. She said all young men were that way, that they had to sow their wild oats and then they settled down, and that I was very disloyal to Stan to feel that way, that all young fellows, especially nowadays, thought nothing of a thing like that. Then I asked her if you did that way when you were young, and she looked kind of funny and smiled and said no, very sharply, that you were ‘different.’ But I couldn’t quite understand. Dad, I can’t help feeling that way about Stan, as if I never had really known him, and as if nothing he ever said to me was true!”

  The father’s hand was still warm on hers, but he was silent for some seconds, and when he spoke his voice was husky with feeling. “I understand, Gloria dear,” he said, speaking slowly. “You were right in your feeling. It was what I felt for you the most, though I was not sure you fully understood what it all meant. But I felt disgraced and outraged for you, dear child, that one who had undertaken to love, honor, and protect you through life should so forget all decency, even though he had been drinking. He had no business to be drinking. That was another thing, Gloria. It didn’t sit well with me to trust you with a drinker. You know how I feel about that.”

  “Yes, I know, Dad, and for that reason somehow I never could drink more than a sip or two. Something inside always made me stop. But Stan could stand a lot, Dad. He never seemed to get silly the way some of the others did. That is one reason why I can’t excuse him. Oh, it seems awful of me to be putting this into words even to you. He is dead now, and I suppose I ought to keep still. But Dad, my heart just cried out. I felt as if everything—the very foundations of the earth—were reeling! And then when Mother said I was silly and it was wicked of me to mind about that girl, and when I think of the way they ignored the whole thing at the funeral, I began to think I was all made up wrong inside, and I had to ask you about it. Is Mother right? Do most of them do such things nowadays?”

  “No!” said her father again earnestly. “No! But if they did, little girl, you’re better off to live out your days alone than marry a man who would be as disloyal to you as Stan has been. It isn’t as if there were any question about it, you know. I had that looked into”—he spoke with a voice of deep sadness—“and it was all true and more than the paper stated!”

  A little sound broke from her white lips, but she made no comment.

  “That is why,” went on her father, “I am hoping you will not grieve too deeply over all this. The young man was not worthy of it. He was not thinking of you, his promised bride, when he went up there to see that girl. He was pleasing himself.”

  Then after an instant he went on again, reluctantly, haltingly, almost shyly. “And you must not think too hardly of your mother either, Glory. She was brought up in a most careful, sheltered way. She really knows little of the evil in the world, and what little she has heard, she has chosen to ignore or not to believe. She has taken up the fashionable way of excusing and condoning the faults of young men and calling them follies rather than sins. Also your mother was not brought up in a religious way as I was, and that makes some difference. I have sometimes thought that she looks down on me as being rather old-fashioned for holding the views that I do—” He paused, thoughtfully, sadly.

  “Father, I think I’m old-fashioned, too, in my thinking,” said the girl at last. “And do you know, I think Mother would be too if it were only the fashion now to be old-fashioned again.”

  Then they both laughed, and a tender feeling of sympathy crept into their voices.

  Soon after that they came upon a little white farmhouse tucked away under elm trees, winking a friendly light from its windows and showing a sign inviting travelers to stop all night.

  “How would you like to stay here tonight?” asked her father. “Or would you rather go on to a good hotel? There’s a small city only about ten miles farther on.” He got out his map and measured the distance with
his eye.

  “Oh, let’s stay here!” said Gloria. “It looks quiet here, and we might meet someone we knew if we went on to the city.”

  So they went in and found pleasant quarters for the night, and to her surprise Gloria fell asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow.

  The next day they went on working north and east, through wooded mountains with narrow dirt roads, deep and dim and silent, where traffic was limited for miles to one farm wagon drawn by an old plow horse, and one ancient flivver. Up and up they climbed till the air grew clearer and colder and the sunshine crisper and lovelier. Gloria began to be interested in all the scenery, a mountain brook rushing musically over great boulders, rambling stone walls that shut in sheep and cows, a glimpse of the sea in the distance, a far city rising picturesquely among the budding spring trees. But they skirted the cities and did not go through them.

  And at last Maine.

  About the middle of the afternoon, Gloria looked up and asked, “Where are we going, Dad?” It seemed to be the first time the thought had occurred to her.

  “Home!” said her father.

  “Home?” said Gloria, a kind of consternation coming into her eyes and a cloud darkening the brightness of her face from which the gloom had been slowly disappearing ever since they had started.

  “To my home,” said her father, “where I lived when I was a child!”

  “Oh, how wonderful!” said the girl. “I would love that. Have you been back? Are you sure it is there yet?”

  “Yes, several times,” said the father gravely. “Once I almost took you and Vanna, but your mother had other plans.”

  “Oh, I wish you had,” said Gloria. “Will it be like the little cottage in the woods where we had lunch yesterday?”

  “No,” said the man thoughtfully, “it is larger. But the little house where I was born is still standing, down in the meadow. It was used for the hired man and his family after we built the big farmhouse nearer to the road, but they are both standing. Ten years ago I put them in good repair. An old friend of Mother’s, Mrs. Weatherby, lives there with her daughter and son-in-law, and another son and his family live in the cottage, but it is all much the same as when I was a child. We are coming to it now. That is the little village in the distance.”