Beauty for Ashes

by Grace Livingston Hill

Vanna laughed, tossed back her dark head with a little motion all her own, and declared, “Well, since I cannot look like the wonderful grandmother I’ve been hearing such great things about, it’s nice I can look like Grandfather.”

  “Your grandfather was a very fine-looking man,” said the old lady, “and a very noble gentleman,” and she went off into one of her interesting tales of the olden days that fascinated Gloria so much. She sat watching her sister half fearfully. Would Vanna see the beauty in it all, or would it bore her?

  But if Vanna was bored, she certainly concealed it well. She led the old lady on and asked many questions, often throwing in a bright comment that made them all laugh. It was most evident that the Hastings and Mrs. Weatherby approved of her, and Gloria drew a breath of relief.

  When the meal was concluded, Gloria began to pick up the plates to carry them out to the kitchen as she had been doing of late, but Emily put up a deprecating hand.

  “Don’t bother about helping today, Gloria,” she said in a low tone, “you run along and have a good time with your sister. I can get on very well alone.”

  “Helping?” said Vanna, turning a quick ear to the furtive conversation. “Let me help, too. How does one do it?” And Vanna sprang into action and began picking up the silver.

  “I’ve never done this before, so I’ll be awkward,” she declared, laughing, “but I’ll confess that it’s been a secret ambition since I was a child to clear off the table and wash the dishes. I used to play it with my dolls hour upon hour. It must have been a little of Grandmother Sutherland stirring in my soul!”

  So both girls helped with the dishes and had a fun time together.

  “This is fun!” said Vanna. “I’d like to have a house of my own and do all the work myself.”

  “I guess you have more of Grandmother in you than I have,” said Gloria. “I rather enjoy doing a little work, but when I see all Mrs. Hastings accomplishes in a day, I’m just appalled. I couldn’t ever do it all. And see, Vanna, Grandmother had to cook in that great old fireplace over there at first, with that crane to swing her kettles on and a funny old oven to bake in!”

  Vanna was intrigued. She went around asking questions and entering into everything as if she had come to stay, begging to be taught how to do this and that.

  “But you would never have a chance to use it even if you did learn how to make biscuits. Imagine Mother letting you go into the kitchen and cook!” said Gloria a little later when they had gone upstairs together. “Imagine you as a wife of some millionaire like Emory Zane, being allowed to cook!” There was a note of contempt in Gloria’s tone.

  “That’s the worst of it,” said Vanna thoughtfully. “I’d have to surrender what little independence I was born with, and in our family even that isn’t much, for Mother has always ruled us with a rod of iron. Of course we’ve had nearly everything we’ve asked for and been terribly spoiled, but it’s beginning to pall on me.”

  Gloria laughed. “My, it’s good to get you back again, Vanna! There is something about the way you say things that goes right to the spot. I certainly have been missing you, and I didn’t know just what was the matter!”

  But Vanna was looking out the window. “Mercy!” she suddenly exclaimed. “There come two of the best-looking men I’ve ever laid eyes on, and they’re coming in this gate! Who on earth could they be? Come here quick, Gloria, before they get up on the porch out of sight. They don’t look like agents, and it must be too early for tourists. Besides, they don’t have hats on.”

  “Only a couple of hicks!” said Gloria with a covert smile in the corners of her mouth as she flung herself indifferently on the bed and yawned.

  “Glory! But they’re not! They’re stunning! I don’t see why you have to be utterly indifferent to all mankind just because you’ve been through trouble!”

  “But I’m not indifferent,” said Gloria. “I told you there were some men that were worth respecting.”

  “Well, why can’t you come here and look at these two? They’re talking with Mr. Hastings out by the fence. You can see them from behind the curtain without being seen. Glory dear! It is perfectly thrilling to find two good-looking men out in the wilds like this. They have very interesting faces!”

  “Yes, haven’t they?” said Gloria grinning impishly.

  Vanna turned around upon her and caught the grin on her lips. “Gloria, what is the matter with you? Do you know who they are? Have you seen them before?”

  “I have a pretty good idea who they are,” said Gloria, still smiling, “but they really are hicks, you know. You said so. You said all the people up here were.”

  “Well, who are they then?” asked Vanna impatiently. “One is very tall. He must be over six feet and well built. How well he manages his height!”

  “That’s Robert Carroll,” explained Gloria in a slow, tantalizing tone. “He’s a young farmer down near Ripley, three or four miles away.”

  “A farmer!” said Vanna incredulously, “but he doesn’t look like a farmer. You must have made a mistake. This man is a gentleman!”

  Gloria laughed. “You’ll have to learn as I did that it is possible to be both a farmer and a gentleman. Vanna dear, I’ve met some farmers up here that are more surely real gentlemen than any millionaire in our crowd at home. They’re real gentlemen. I’ve found out that a man’s occupation doesn’t have anything to do with whether he is a gentleman or not.”

  “Oh, I suppose this one then is a millionaire who plays at farming,” said Vanna, watching the men out the window with a critical eye. “This man never really does manual labor. Why, Glory, he’s well dressed!”

  “Yes,” said Gloria, “always well dressed, even when he wears overalls, I understand. But he’s not playing at farming. He works himself, and he’s been to college and then taken a postgraduate agricultural course. They say he’s some farmer.”

  “Well, I like his looks,” said Vanna doubtfully, “but he certainly isn’t my idea of a farmer.”

  “Well, you’ll find a good many of your ideas will get upset up here if you stay long enough,” said Gloria. “Mine have.”

  “All right, maybe I will,” said Vanna. “And who is the other man? I don’t know which I think is the better looking.”

  “I do!” said Gloria, “but I’m not telling. The other man is Murray MacRae. His people live across the road there in that big white farmhouse. He has a sister, Lindsey, who is engaged to a college professor. They say she is lovely. She is coming home the end of this week, and I’m crazy to see her. Her picture is lovely!”

  “Yes, but what about the young man? Is he a farmer, too?”

  “No, he is in business in New York, or is about to be. His father was a famous shipbuilder. He built the Columbia and several other big boats. Murray is a dear. He is just up here on a visit.”

  “You’ve met him, haven’t you?” Vanna gave a swift glance at her sister and then turned back to the window.

  “Yes, I’ve met him,” said Gloria, trying to make her tone quite casual.

  “Just met him? Is that all?” queried Vanna.

  “Oh, I’ve played tennis with him a couple of times.”

  “Oh! I see why you’re so willing to stay up here now! Does Father know about him?”

  “No, he didn’t arrive until after Father left. But he’s quite all right. The Hastings have known him all his life, and they say he is wonderful!”

  “I wasn’t asking whether he had a recommendation or not,” said Vanna dryly. “One would trust him even from this distance. He looks that way. I was just wondering.”

  It was quiet in the room for a moment, and then Vanna spoke again in a lower tone. “They’re coming into the house, Gloria. What do you suppose they want?”

  “Well, if you ask me, they’ve probably come to get you to play for them. They both have gorgeous voices.”

  “Me to play for them!” Vanna turned around and gave her sister a wondering stare. “Why, how on earth would they know anything about me, you silly?”<
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  “They don’t, only that you can play. I told them that.”

  “But you didn’t know I was coming,” said Vanna.

  “No, and they don’t know you are here, but when they find out, they will ask you to play because I told them you can play so much better than I can.”

  Vanna turned and rushed upon her sister to give her a good shaking, but Gloria, laughing, slid out from under her grasp.

  “But really, Van, they’re awfully nice. I haven’t seen much of them, of course, but you’ll like their voices, and they’re real gentlemen if they are hicks.”

  Then came Emily Hastings’s voice calling, “Gloria! Can you girls come down? The boys are here and want to see you. I’ve got my hands in the dough and can’t leave!”

  “All right!” caroled Gloria. “We’ll be right down!”

  Vanna looked at her sister curiously. “This certainly is a place of informalities!” she said, but she followed her sister down the stairs, curious to see these two young men at closer range.

  “My sister, Vanna, has come!” There was a real lilt in Gloria’s voice as she came flying down to the two who stood in the front hall, but it was Murray MacRae’s eyes that her eyes met, Vanna noticed, and who looked gladly into hers. It was left for the other tall stranger to welcome Vanna. Their glances met and locked for an instant, a long inquiring glance, growing almost intimate before Robert Carroll broke the silence.

  “I’ve been wondering what you would be like,” he said in that rich, husky tone of his. “I’m glad you’ve come!” And then he reached out a big warm hand and clasped hers for a moment, and Vanna found herself glad also that she had come.

  And yet Gloria had said that this man was a farmer! It was incredible!

  Chapter 9

  All the time they were talking in the hall, while Murray MacRae was being introduced to her and they were planning what they were going to do, Vanna was only conscious of Robert Carroll watching her. She had the strangest feeling that she was in a dream and had met a dream man and would presently wake up and find he was not real.

  She answered when they spoke to her, she laughed with the rest, she was conscious that Murray MacRae was interesting and spoke like the gentleman he looked to be, but she kept looking at Robert Carroll and wondering. She kept thinking that the look in his eyes was so clean and strong. She kept comparing it with Emory Zane’s world-weary look, his deep, meaningful glance.

  When they walked across the road to MacRaes’ house, it was Robert Carroll who fitted his step to hers and walked beside her, pointing out the mountain in the distance that was the show mountain of the locality, telling her about the cowslips that he had found in bloom that morning, and when she asked what a cowslip was, describing it to her in all its delicacy of tiny golden scallops and rough grayish-green leaves, promising to bring her some the next time he came up.

  The girl who had been the recipient many times of the costliest orchids and roses and gardenias that money could buy felt a breathless desire to see and know cowslips.

  They entered the dim old parlor at MacRaes’, and Vanna took in its quaint beauties and wondered just as her sister had done, recognizing something intrinsically lovely that made up a thing called home, the kind of home the white stone palace at Roselands had never been in spite of all its luxury.

  Vanna saw a likeness between the pictured daughter on the piano and the sweet, plain woman who came in presently to greet them. She wondered if all the women in this part of the world looked as if they came out of other days.

  They made her play of course, though she demurred. But when Carroll looked at her and smiled, something beyond her own control made her sit down at the piano and play a Chopin prelude that she had scarcely looked at since her days of taking lessons from her great and expensive teacher, who had loved such things as this. Somehow it was the only thing she knew that came to her as appropriate, and she wondered at herself as her fingers felt their way among the yellowed, old keys.

  She had thought when she first saw the old, square piano with its mother-of-pearl decoration that it would be quite impossible to play on, but to her surprise it was in perfect tune.

  “I hope it’s all right,” said Murray, anxiously hovering around. “We just had it tuned last week for Lindsey’s coming. She’s very particular about it.”

  “It’s lovely!” said Vanna, noticing what clear, beautiful eyes the young man had, astonished again that there should be two such young men in this out-of-the-way place.

  The little audience settled down in the big company room, while Murray tiptoed around to raise the shades and let the sunlight in till a long bright ray rested on Gloria’s golden head.

  Murray’s mother came softly in again to listen, sitting in a dim corner with a pleased, tender look on her face. Later, when they spoke of trying to borrow a violin for Gloria to use, she slipped quietly out of the room, returning presently with something wrapped in a soft silk cloth. Walking over to where Gloria sat, she unwrapped it and laid it gently in Gloria’s lap.

  “It was my son’s,” she said softly. “I’d like to hear you play on it. I don’t know whether it is in shape to play or not, but Lindsey had it put in good order last summer, and it has been wrapped away from dampness and cold. Perhaps it will need some fixing. Murray will know.”

  The little company was silent as she laid one of her treasures down for their pleasure. Gloria was deeply touched, and even Vanna, who had not heard the story of the brother who had died in such a tragic way, brushed her hand across her eyes and thought what tender unusual people these were. Again she had that feeling of being in a dream and expecting to wake up pretty soon and find it all a mirage, everything was so different from all her previous experience.

  Gloria took up the instrument and touched it tenderly. “It looks like a very fine one,” she said, looking carefully at it. “It looks—why, it looks like a Stradivarius!”

  “Yes, it’s a Strad,” said Murray, coming over to point out an inscription inside, which could be dimly read if turned in a certain way.

  Gloria drew her fingers over it softly. “But I’m not a great enough player to play on an instrument like this!” she said softly, bending her head lovingly over it and touching the strings. “The G string is broken,” she said regretfully.

  “I think there are some strings,” said the mother. “The case is on the chair in the hall, Murray.”

  Presently they had the violin supplied with strings, and Gloria tuned it and played a chord or two.

  “Ah!” said Murray, drawing in a breath of pleasure as he realized that Gloria was bringing a great tone from the old instrument.

  Then together the girls played snatches of old masters they had learned when they were studying intensively, and the mother sat and wiped a furtive tear away now and then and thought of how her boy used to play for her.

  After they had played for some time, Gloria laid the violin down and turned to Murray. “Now, you will please sing! It’s quite your turn to perform, and I’ve been telling Vanna about your voices.”

  “Voice, you mean,” said Murray. “I’m not much of a singer.”

  “Now, just for that, we’ll make you sing first!” said Carroll.

  But it finally ended in Murray selecting some music from the music cabinet and making his friend sing it alone.

  Vanna was thrilled to find such a voice, just as she had been astonished to find such a man so far from sophistication. She accompanied him as one who recognizes a truly good singer, and his voice rang out deep and true until it filled the big parlor. Gloria, able to sit and listen now without having to think about her playing was rejoiced to see that her first impression of his singing had not been exaggerated. He really sang wonderfully.

  “Now,” said Carroll as he finished the last long note of his solo, “come Murray! We’ll give them a jolly one first, and then ‘What Did He Do?’ ”

  Without bothering to hunt any music, the two young men stood together, their arms across one a
nother’s shoulders, and sang a funny little melody, only a jingle really, where the words tumbled over one another so rapidly that one wondered how mortal tongue could speak them and not trip up.

  Then while their audience was still laughing over this, and still without accompaniment, the two sounded a soft note and broke into another song:

  “Oh, listen to our wondrous story,

  Counted once among the lost,

  Yet, one came down from heaven’s glory,

  Saving us at awful cost!

  Who saved us from eternal loss?

  Who but God’s Son upon the cross?

  What did He do?

  He died for you!

  Where is He now?

  Believe it thou,

  In heaven, interceding!”

  From the first note, Gloria had fixed her eyes on their faces, recalling the story Murray had told her of the ship and the lost brother. The meaning he had meant to teach her came more clearly to her now, and it was as if the message came straight to her own heart. “He died for you!” She had heard enough in the meeting last night to understand what that meant, and the message sank deep, taking on a personal insistence that she knew sometime she had to meet and answer.

  When the second verse began, as the two voices blended so exquisitely, the enunciation being so perfect as to seem like but one person speaking the words, she glanced toward her sister to see what she thought of this, and found Vanna’s eyes fixed on the singers, a look of utter astonishment and bewilderment on her face.

  “No angel could our place have taken,

  Highest of the high, though He;

  The loved One on the cross forsaken,

  Was one of the Godhead three.”

  Again that striking chorus, those questions and answers! Gloria looked at Vanna again and saw she wore the same almost frightened look that had been on her face at Stan’s funeral. It was getting Vanna, too! She didn’t understand this strange thing that these young men had that made them so different from other young men, but it was getting her!

  But when the last verse was reached, it seemed to Gloria as if it were personal, just for herself, and she sat with down-drooped eyes throughout.