Beauty for Ashes

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Chapter 8

  The next morning about ten o’clock, Vanna arrived in a taxi!

  Gloria saw her from the window and flew down to receive her with open arms.

  “You darling, old thing!” she cried eagerly and enclosed her with a bear hug.

  “Dad said you’d be glad to see me!” said Vanna, gazing at her sister with satisfaction. “But you don’t look as if you were moping yourself to death at all. Mother thought you would be in the last stages of decline. She insisted I should come up and make you come home!”

  “I’m not moping!” said Gloria with a smile and a sudden realization that she didn’t want to go home because she was getting interested in things that were going on in Afton. There was a sudden wild clutching of her heartstrings lest Vanna wouldn’t understand and would make fun and jeer. She couldn’t stand it if Vanna got that way about things.

  “It’s a peachy view,” said Vanna, looking across the meadows toward the mountains, “but aren’t you bored sick? What on earth do you do all the time?”

  “No,” said Gloria gravely, “I’m not bored. I like it here. It’s different. It’s restful. It’s—Oh, I don’t suppose you’ll like it, but I really enjoy it!”

  “Hm,” said Vanna, looking at her keenly. “You don’t look so bad, but how do you get this way? I can’t understand.”

  “No, I’m afraid you won’t!” said Gloria with a troubled look. “I’m all kinds of glad to see you. But I wish they hadn’t sent you. I really do, Vanna. You’ll be bored to death! I know you will, and I’m all right. I just couldn’t come home yet.”

  “Don’t worry, kid, I don’t blame you. It’s been infernal, that’s the truth. Everybody weeping on our shoulders, moaning for you. It would have been twice as bad if you had been there. And Mrs. Asher has been the limit. You’d have thought that we as a family were personally responsible for Stan’s death! It’s been simply awful! But she’s gone to a hospital now. Thank goodness that’s over!”

  “A hospital!” said Gloria, her bright face suddenly overspread with new gloom.

  “There! I suppose I shouldn’t have told you that!” said Vanna.

  “Yes, you must tell me everything,” said Gloria insistently. “I want to know everything. I’ve had a chance to get my bearings to some extent at least, and eventually I’ve got to know.”

  “I suppose so!” sighed Vanna sympathetically, “but let’s forget it now for a while and let me get cleaned up. I’m simply a sight traveling all night on the cars. I’d forgotten what a lot of dirt one accumulates on a train.”

  They went into the house, and Emily in her tidy bright cotton dress came out with a smudge of flour on one cheek to greet the newcomer.

  Vanna gave her a quick, scrutinizing look, wondering if she was some superior kind of a servant. Gloria, sensing the situation, hastened to introduce her.

  “This is Mrs. Hastings, Vanna. She’s been awfully good to me, and so has her mother, Mrs. Weatherby. I suppose Dad will have told you all about them. This is my sister, Evangeline, Mrs. Hastings. She came up to surprise me.”

  Vanna was quick to take a hint and smiled sweetly at the hostess.

  “I have hardly had two words with Dad since he came home till yesterday when he called me on the phone and asked me to come up here and stay with you a while or bring you home because he couldn’t,” she explained. “Dad has been at the office every blessed minute, except perhaps an hour or two in the night, but he came after I was gone and departed before I was up. There’s been a lot to bother him, I guess, for we’ve scarcely seen him since he came back.”

  Emily Hastings went upstairs with them, carrying one of the largest of the suitcases. Gloria seized another bag, and Vanna, looking a trifle surprised, picked up the third one and followed. Vanna had never had to carry her own luggage before. Not that she minded. But it seemed a bit odd to her.

  Vanna looked around the big, comfortable room with surprised approval as she took in the four-poster bed, the fine old chests of drawers, the desk, the highboy, and the deep winged chair. Then she watched Emily hurry away for clean towels and turned to Gloria.

  “I see what you mean,” she said significantly, just as if Gloria had been saying how lovely it was. “It’s really sweet here. What nifty old furniture! Is it ours or theirs? I mean, does it belong in the family, or did they bring it here?”

  “It’s ours, I think,” said Gloria. “The house was left furnished just as it was when Grandmother died. Father bought out the other heirs’ shares I think, house and furniture and everything.”

  “Then it’s really ancestral,” said Vanna with glowing eyes. “That does make it interesting.”

  “Yes,” said Gloria, “it does. For instance, my bed belonged to Father’s mother. She seems to have been rather a wonderful grandmother. She had five children, did all her own work, including washing, ironing, cooking, and housecleaning, and she even cooked for farmhands at harvesting times. She did the family sewing, too, made shirts and everything. Mrs. Weatherby, Emily’s mother and Grandmother’s best friend, has been telling me. She was some grandmother! Made preserves enough to stock a wholesale grocery. I’ve seen the closet that they say she used to fill every year. And with it all she did beautiful embroidery.”

  “Heaven preserve us!” said Vanna, “how did she get time to play bridge and go to her clubs?”

  Gloria laughed. “I haven’t heard of any clubs, and I don’t believe there was anybody up here to play bridge with in those days. The Weatherbys lived five miles away then on another farm, and the MacRaes hadn’t come yet. There was only a store and a post office down in Afton village, and most neighbors lived several miles away!”

  “I wonder how that would be?” said Vanna dreamily. “I feel as if I were in a foreign country, don’t you?”

  “No,” said Gloria thoughtfully, “I feel as if I were back in the past century. I’ve had the strangest feeling about it ever since I came. It’s that that has helped me to endure life. It seemed somehow as if I had just been taken out of the time that I lived in and put back into a simple restful place where I didn’t have to think about anything, only go around and look at the old things and places and try to realize how it must have been. It’s just as quaint as can be. It’s been only now and then I’ve been jerked back into now, and I remember all that happened and it’s just as if somebody had struck me over the heart.”

  “You poor kid!” said Vanna pityingly. “It’s been an awful comedown for you, and you have taken it like a soldier. I’m proud as I can be of you.”

  “I haven’t been brave,” said Gloria, shaking her head, “not at all. I’ve been a shirker. I ran away from it all. I just felt as if I couldn’t bear it there where everybody knew about it. But, do you know, Van, the hardest thing about it was the way everybody tried to camouflage what Stan had done, and act as if it was nothing at all. Why, that made me feel as if nobody could understand what I was suffering, and I felt just humiliated as if I, too, was pretending that nothing was the matter but death. Why, Vanna, if Stan had just died in some ordinary way, like crashing in an airplane or being in a car accident or having pneumonia, it would have been a decent death, and one could have mourned and borne it, and felt some self-respect. But the way it was, I couldn’t mourn! I was just shocked! I was shocked almost to death! I don’t know if you understand or not, Vanna, but you always used to understand me when we were children.”

  “Sure, I understand,” said Vanna getting up and going to the window to look out across the meadows abstractedly. “It isn’t according to the code of our crowd of course to mind things like that, and it wouldn’t be considered good form to let it be seen that you felt that way, but—there’s something fine about you, Gloria—perhaps I might say about—well, our family. At least in our feelings. We don’t go quite as far as the rest. Mother of course talks a lot about doing what we’re expected to do, but even Mother really has a pretty conventional way of thinking, and I’m sure she was terribly upset about what was in
the paper. That was why she wanted everything done to cover it up.”

  “I know,” said Gloria sadly, drooping down on the foot of the bed.

  “But here,” said Vanna, wheeling around, “this is no way to be talking to you, dwelling on things like this. I was sent up here to cheer you up. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “No, Vanna,” said Gloria, “I want to talk about this a little yet. There are some things that simply have to be said, and you and I have got to understand each other. In the first place, I do feel that part about the girl awfully, and I always will. In the second place, there are some things I’m done with forever, and drinking’s one of them. If Stan hadn’t been drinking a lot, he never would have put himself in a situation where he would have been shot. As I’ve been thinking back, I’m disgusted at the way our crowd carries on.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Vanna, looking serious.

  “And when I go back,” said Gloria, “—if I’ve got to go back—I’m not going back to the old ways in lots of things.”

  Her sister eyed her gravely. “Father feels the way you do,” said Vanna.

  Gloria looked up quickly. “Has Dad been talking to you?”

  “No, but I overheard a few words he said to Mother the other day. I’ve always known Dad’s quietness covered a lot of thoughts. He told Mother he wished we could be done with playing up to the multitude.”

  There was silence in the room while both girls thought this over.

  “There’s another thing,” said Gloria slowly, “I want you to understand. I don’t think I’ll ever marry anybody, no matter how rich or popular they are, but if I do, it won’t be anybody who trains in a crowd like ours or has that kind of standards.”

  Vanna looked at her sadly. “I don’t blame you, Glory, but where would you find anybody else? There aren’t any men who don’t do that kind of thing!”

  “Yes, there are!” said Gloria decidedly. “I’ve found out there are! Father says there are, and I’ve found he’s right. I’ve met a couple that I’m sure about!”

  Her sister brought her eyes around and surveyed her piercingly. “Lead me to ’em!” she said at last. “I don’t believe it, but I’d like to see one just to say it was true.”

  “Well,” said Gloria, “maybe you wouldn’t understand. Maybe you wouldn’t like their type, but I know they are decent and fine and clean.”

  “Hicks, I suppose?” said Vanna half contemptuously.

  “No, not hicks either,” said Gloria. “Now, Vanna, please tell me about the Ashers. I suppose I have a duty there. I ought to write to them. Somehow I couldn’t before, but I feel as if your coming had cleared the atmosphere a little.”

  Vanna laughed. “I’m glad I’ve done some good, but I don’t know that it’s good for you to discuss the Ashers.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s something that must be done. Is Mrs. Asher really very sick or just gone away to rest?”

  “Well, I guess she’s sick all right. She had the hysterics so continuously that Nance was almost insane herself, and then they took her away to a hospital for nervous cases. She’s really off her head, I guess. They don’t let even the family see her, and Nance is staying home looking after her father. He’s had a stroke and may not recover.”

  “Oh, Vanna! How terrible!”

  “Yes, isn’t it? Poor Nance is so bitter and hard! It makes me shudder to hear her talk. She’s been going a lot with Ad Harrison. She doesn’t seem to care what she does anymore. You might write to her when you feel able, but I don’t know what you could say.”

  “Oh, I don’t know either!” groaned Gloria. “Nor what to say if I write to her mother. She was the one who spoiled Stan. She taught him to drink and gave him everything he wanted.”

  “I know,” said Vanna, “but you won’t have to write to her. She’s nuts, and she won’t know whether you’ve written or not. Besides, I went up the day after you left while she still could understand what was said to her, and I told her that you were in a pretty bad way yourself and had to get away, and for a wonder she seemed to expect it and to be a little sorry for you, but then she started wailing again and wailed for you too, and I couldn’t stand it. I had to leave!”

  “Poor Vanna! I ran away and left you to do my duties!”

  “Nonsense!” said Vanna, winking back the tears. “You had no duty toward her. She has always encouraged Stan in all his wildness. Besides, I was glad if you could escape any disagreeableness.”

  “Dear Vanna!” said Gloria getting up and standing beside her sister’s chair. “You’ve been wonderful. It must have been awful for you. And Mother doing a welfare drive! I’m so sorry! Tell me, what have you been doing? Wasn’t there anything nice to break the dreadfulness of it all?”

  “Oh, well, Emory Zane has been rushing me a lot since you’ve been gone, if you call that nice. I don’t know whether I do or not. I came up here to find out.”

  “Emory Zane!” said Gloria in dismay. “Oh, Vanna! Not Emory Zane!”

  “Well, what’s the matter with Emory Zane?” asked Vanna crossly. “He’s rich and awfully good-looking. He’s full of pep, and it would never be monotonous around him. Of course I haven’t been going out. Mother wouldn’t have thought that was proper so soon. But he’s been at the house almost every night. He took me up to his apartment one day. It’s perfectly fascinating. He has things there from all over the world where he’s traveled.”

  “Vanna! You went to his apartment alone with him?”

  “Well, I didn’t know where he was taking me. I thought we were going to a roof garden, but it seems he’d planned a little surprise dinner for me in his own apartment, and I couldn’t very well get out of it when we got there, could I? But really it was quite proper. He knows I won’t stand for any nonsense. He says that’s why he admires me. He says I’m so sweet and innocent.”

  “Oh, Vanna! He’s so old! So much older than you! And so— well, I don’t know what to call it. Worldly I suppose is the word, but it’s something more than that that I mean. It’s sort of—well, he has really wicked black eyes. I’ve always hated to have him look at me. I never thought that you would fall for him!”

  “Well, I haven’t fallen for him yet, have I? Only there is something rather thrilling in having a man of the world fall at your feet that way. You can’t help feeling flattered. And after all, perhaps he’s as good as anybody I’d ever know.”

  “Oh, Vanna! Why, what has become of Reagan Moore and Halstead Camp and Teddy Stansbury? They were all crazy about you!”

  “Well, they’re all around of course, sending flowers and trying to make quiet dates that will be suitable to my circumstances, but what are they but three more Stan Ashers? Just a lot of kids out to have a good time like the rest. After all, if one has to stand that sort of thing, why not go in for a man who is really interesting?”

  “Oh, but not Emory Zane, Vanna! Why, he has a son who is nearly as old as you are, and what about that story of his first wife?”

  Vanna shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sure I don’t know; it may be true. If I married him, I shouldn’t expect him to be an angel of light of course. But would I be any worse off than you are?”

  Gloria gave a little shiver and then answered steadily, “Yes, Vanna, I think you would. I’ve been thinking sometimes that perhaps I was saved from something else more terrible.”

  “Well, I don’t see it,” said Vanna, “and anyway, if I married a man like that, I’d have my own private fortune, and there is always divorce if the worst comes. It’s all a gamble anyway.”

  “Oh, Vanna! You mustn’t! You mustn’t!” cried Gloria, the tears starting into her eyes. “Oh, why, when we’ve been so happy, must everything awful come at once? Vanna, have you thought of Mother and Father? Do they know you went to Mr. Zane’s apartment?”

  “No, and don’t you dare tell them!” said Vanna, flashing her eyes angrily at her sister. “I don’t intend to do it again, at least not until I marry him, if I ever do, and what Dad and Mot
her don’t know won’t hurt them.”

  “No, I won’t tell them—not now anyway. Not unless you do something terrible! Not unless you decide to marry him. Then I’d have to do something! I couldn’t have that go on!”

  “Well, I’m not married yet!” said Vanna sharply. “And I’m not at all sure that I’ll ever marry anybody. Why should we have to if we don’t want to? You and I can go and live together somewhere and just have a good time.”

  “Of course we can,” said Gloria, slipping her arm around her sister and nestling up to her. “You’re unhappy, Vanna, aren’t you? I’ve been so taken up with my own affairs that I didn’t know it. I’m sorry, dear. We’ll both of us think of something better to do than get married.”

  They were laughing now, though there was a bright sparkle of tears on their lashes. They had not been inclined to showing much emotion and were half shamefaced about it.

  Then suddenly the bell for the midday dinner pealed out and Vanna gave her sister a startled look. “What on earth is that?” she asked.

  “That’s the dinner bell, old dear, and we must wash our faces and go right downstairs. There is usually something good that needs to be eaten while hot.”

  So Vanna went down to her first farm dinner.

  Emily had not been idle. There was fried chicken and new potatoes and peas, with hot biscuits and honey for dessert.

  Vanna was enthusiastic about everything. “I begin to see why my sister wasn’t willing to come home,” she said as she accepted a second helping of peas. “There’s a taste about this dinner that we don’t get at home in spite of our French cooks.”

  Vanna did full justice to the hearty dinner and made herself most friendly with the Hastings and Mrs. Weatherby, who told Vanna she looked like her grandfather Sutherland.