Beauty for Ashes

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “Charles!” his wife fairly snorted—if one can use so plebeian a word for a cultured Bostonian wife. “How pitiful that you cannot understand! It only goes to show that one never overcomes the initial environment! You cannot see the difference between riding on fine horses at the riding club or hunt and driving a corn-planting machine through a muddy field! Oh,” she moaned, “what a sight they will be when they get back!”

  “My dear, one doesn’t plant corn in the mud,” informed her husband quietly. “Your agricultural knowledge is somewhat at fault.”

  “No!” said the comely matron, sighing deeply. “Thank goodness I wasn’t brought up on a farm! It’s something one doesn’t get over. And that is the very reason why I think the girls should come home at once! I want you to call them up this evening and order them home immediately! As carefully as we have brought them up, to have them exposed to such common things at this impressionable time of their lives! Those girls are both like you, Charles, and I’m afraid they’re reverting to type. I couldn’t stand it to have that happen to them after all their brilliant prospects! To think of Gloria just on the eve of a splendid marriage!”

  “Mother! Can you say that, after what happened?”

  “Now, Charles, don’t be absurd. You know the Asher family is beyond reproach and socially about as high as one can get around here. No family is more respected, and everybody counted that a brilliant marriage. It’s absurd to hold a moment of weakness against poor Stan. It wasn’t Stan’s fault that he got shot by some low-down creature that wasn’t fit to live on the same earth with him. Poor Stan!”

  “Adelaide! Stop that sentimental patter!” said her husband indignantly. “It was Stan’s fault that he was shot in the company he was in, and you know it! I feel that Gloria was providentially saved from a life of sorrow. If you can bewail her fate when you know all the circumstances, then I cannot understand a mother’s heart.”

  “No, you can’t understand a mother’s heart, Charles!” said his wife furiously. “You think it is pleasant to plan and work and sacrifice to put children into their proper sphere in life and then see everything upset by a whim. Gloria sent off to play childishly in the fields, making mud pies to forget her trouble that she ought to sit up and face like a woman and get over as quickly as she can, and Vanna sacrificing her whole summer and perhaps her life’s fortune to be with her! It is absurd. It is unspeakable. I don’t suppose that you know that Vanna was probably on the eve of making a brilliant engagement, did you, when you ordered her off to that outlandish farm town to care for her sister?”

  “No,” said the father wearily, “what brilliant marriage was Vanna meditating?”

  “Well,” said his wife, preening herself reproachfully, turning her head so that the long jet and pearl eardrops twinkled and one of them dropped on her white shoulder, “you’ve been so absorbed in business lately that you haven’t paid the slightest attention to what was going on in the heart of our family, but Vanna has made a brilliant conquest. A really distinguished man of the world has been deeply devoted to her ever since Gloria went away. It’s strange you haven’t noticed, even abstracted as you are! He has been here almost constantly, until she went away, and it really was very unwise for her to have gone. I am sure only stern duty would have allowed her to accede to your request! I don’t suppose you in the least realized, but a girl doesn’t have a devoted beau like this one often. Rich, distinguished, cultured, traveled! They say he has been all over the world and visited intimately with the nobility of Europe. He—!”

  Mr. Sutherland raised his hand in protest. “Who is this paragon of a man, may I ask?”

  His wife pronounced the name impressively. “Mr. Emory Jarvis Zane!”

  “You don’t mean that hound of an Emory Zane?” roared the incensed father.

  “Now, Charles, if you are going to start being abusive!” said his wife offendedly. “Every time I speak of somebody, you take a dislike to him at once. Just because I tell you how wonderful he is!”

  “Look here, Adelaide! You don’t know what you are talking about! Emory Zane isn’t fit for Vanna to wipe her feet on! Why, he isn’t respectable! Every man in town knows what he is. Did you know that he has been divorced twice? And the wife he now has is seeking a divorce from him?”

  “Oh, you’re mistaken, Charles,” said his wife in a superior tone, “his first wife died when they had only been married a few months, and his second wife ran off with another man. This third wife is really insane. She has been in the asylum for two years and escaped, and he has had an awful time with her. Poor man, he is so misunderstood. He has been telling me all about it. He says our Vanna is so sweet and unspoiled and sympathetic—”

  “Adelaide!” roared the man of the house, exasperated beyond measure. “Don’t ever let him come near her again! He’s the offscouring of the earth! All that line he has been giving you is a downright lie! I happen to know the truth. His first wife left him the first week they were married, sued for a divorce at once, and got it some weeks before her death. Her child is almost as old as Vanna now. The second wife was another like himself and went off with the next man who interested her, knowing that her husband was already tired of her. The third wife was put in the insane asylum by Emory Zane and kept there two years because he was interested in another woman and wanted to get rid of her. She was told that she was going to a rest cure when she was committed but found that she was in the state asylum and had to run away to get free. She has never been insane, though she has had plenty to make her so, and the whole thing was a frame-up between Zane and two doctors who were well paid. Is that the kind of mess you want your daughter to be mixed up in?”

  “Oh, no, Charles, that’s all wrong. That’s what that poor insane woman is telling around among his acquaintances, and it isn’t true in the least. Why, the authorities don’t put her right back under sufficient guard so she can’t run away again, I don’t know! But I didn’t think you were one to listen to gossip!”

  “Adelaide!” said her husband sternly. “I know what I’m talking about! I’ve been in the confidence of that woman’s family for some time and have used all the influence I had to help them. She is no more insane than you or I and has suffered terribly. She was a beautiful, young girl when he married her—she is not much older than Vanna now—and yet her hair has turned perfectly white with trouble! I insist that you shall have nothing more to do with that man! I insist that he shall not be allowed in this house, and that neither you nor my children shall have any further communication with him!”

  “Now, Charles! How absurd! You can’t give me orders that way, you know!”

  “I certainly can, and I will! This is one matter in which I will be obeyed!”

  “But, Charles! What can I say to him when he comes? I can’t insult him!”

  “No, you’re right in that, Adelaide! It wouldn’t be possible to insult a man like that, because he has no quality good enough to insult! He is entirely beyond insult. The worst that you could say to him is not as bad as he is. Adelaide, I insist!”

  “Now, look here, Charles, just because you have listened to a lot of gossip, I can’t treat any man that way! I have been friendly and sympathetic with him. I would have to give some explanation—”

  “Tell him your husband has forbidden his presence in the house!” thundered the man who was usually so quiescent regarding the matters of the household. “He is a viper! He is a fiend!”

  “Now, Charles,” soothed his astonished wife, “don’t talk so loud; the servants will hear you! Of course if you feel that way—!”

  “I do feel that way! And furthermore, I cannot understand why you don’t feel that way also! You who are afraid of a little manual labor for the girls!”

  “Well, but, Charles, that certainly is the limit—girls like that going out on a farm machine! It isn’t respectable! I suppose of course they only did it for fun, but really, if it should get back to Roselands, I don’t know what would be thought of them. It is such a strange th
ing, anyway, going off up there to that forsaken place and hanging around with farm people when they might be having their own congenial friends around them.”

  “If you ask me, I think they will find a lot more congenial friends up in the country than down here in Roselands. At least the young people up their aren’t going around all night from one speakeasy to another, trying to see how much liquor they can carry and how many wild crimes they can get away with under the name of fun or whatever crazy name they may happen to call it!”

  “Charles! You oughtn’t to talk that way. As if the girls went with low-down company.”

  “Well, they do, don’t they? Didn’t they just escape being caught in a low-down place in low-down company last winter when Madden’s Roadhouse was raided? They hadn’t been away from it five minutes when it happened, and it’s a miracle they didn’t have to come up in court to testify at that murder trial. They were in the place when the quarrel began, weren’t they? Oh, I tell you there are a lot worse things they can do than plant corn! There are a lot worse places they can go than back to my old home in the country. If you would only go up there once and see for yourself, you wouldn’t be so prejudiced.”

  There was a wistfulness in his tone as he spoke the last sentence, and his wife jumped up from the table sharply.

  “Well, I’m not going,” she said. “I don’t like the country. Let’s not talk any more about it.” Then she left the room.

  Mr. Sutherland left his coffee unfinished and slowly, sadly retreated to the library, which was considered his special province, and there he lunged into business perplexities, working at his desk until far into the night. Occasionally though, he was haunted by the vision of the man whom he considered a fiend incarnate, and he would sit back in his big chair and drop his face into his hands and groan at the thought of his two beloved girls. Vanna and Emory Zane! It was unthinkable. He must get off and go up and have a talk with Vanna. He couldn’t trust his wife, and she was too easily influenced by wealth and public opinion and a desire for brilliant marriages for her daughters. She wished to be known as a mother who achieved big things.

  But Roselands was not the only place to which the corn planting episode brought disturbance. Back on the outskirts of Ripley Township, there stood a little old farmhouse up on a hillside overlooking the cornfield owned by Robert Carroll. The woman who lived in that farmhouse had the reputation of being up-to-date in all the news of the country, especially such as came under her own observation. Having no children and being somewhat isolated from neighbors, she had much time hanging heavily on her hands, and she made the most of the few advantages that were left her in life. She could still see out her end windows, down across the rich valley of farmlands, to the highway that ran to Ripley, and because her eyes were beginning to fail her and one could scarcely hope anyway even with good eyes to recognize people and cars at such a distance, she kept a pair of fine field glasses close beside the window on her little sewing table. Afternoons when her work was done, mornings, too, sometimes, she amused herself by studying the landscape and watching all comers and goers on that highway. It was often thus she picked up many a juicy item of news that helped out the village paper news editor. And so Mrs. Coulter had come to be known in the locality as one who knew a thing or two about almost everything that was going on.

  On the morning of the corn planting, Robert Carroll and his two men were out in the field early with their team and machine, and Mrs. Coulter got out her glasses and laid them handy, knowing that she was sure of something going on nearby that day. When she had washed up her dishes and set her bread to rise, she went out on her side porch with a basket of mending and her field glasses and prepared to enjoy herself. She liked to watch the mellow ground being turned in furrows, liked to look at the straight rows and smooth lines where the machine had passed. It was to her an art.

  But it was not long before a car going by on the highway turned in at the opening in the fence where the bars were down and drove slowly around the border of plowed ground till it came to a halt not far from the big elm tree that made a wide shade near the back of the lot.

  Matilda Coulter raised her glasses and leveled them at the strange car, thrilled with joy as it drew nearer, straight into her line of vision. She did not often find her traveling shows coming so near.

  It was a big car, not any car that she knew hereabouts. She studied its peculiarities and made up her mind it must be one of two very expensive makes. She wasn’t sure which because not many fine cars came her way. But it had an opulent look, and it might even be one of those priceless foreign makes that one heard about now and then but never saw nearby.

  As it came on, she noted that there were two girls and a man in the car, though she couldn’t see the girls very well until they got out. Then she saw that one had yellow hair and one was dark. Ah! That must be the yellow-haired Sutherland girl who was staying at the Weatherbys, and the other was no doubt her sister. She had heard that her sister had arrived the morning before. Tom Batty the taxi driver had stopped to beg for gingerbread on his way back from taking her up, and he had told her. Tom always knew he could get gingerbread in exchange for the news, and many were the choice morsels that found their way into his capacious mouth as he taxied here and there by Matilda Coulter’s door. Yes, the Sutherlands! And of course that was their car. They would bring a nifty thing like that up there in the country to astonish the natives! But who was the young man? She had heard they had a brother but had always thought of him as a child.

  Then Murray MacRae got out and stood where she could get a glimpse of his face, and she recognized him. Ah! Murray MacRae and the Sutherlands! Of course. And Robert Carroll! She licked her lips and drew a breath of pleased surprise! Right at her own door. It didn’t often happen that way!

  Her active mind began to get out and display in orderly manner all that she knew about the young people in the field below her. Gloria Sutherland. That was the girl with the yellow hair. And her fiancé had just been shot in a row in a New York nightclub. Kind of disgraceful doings. She was supposed by the neighbors up there to have come to her father’s old home to mourn her bridegroom and get out of the public eye, but here she was coming in the company of an attractive young man— rather soon if one were really mourning—to the home of another young man during his working hours! Rather strange doings! One who mourned did not display herself in public, thought Matilda Coulter as she watched the young people with avid eye.

  All through the morning she watched, even catching their expressions with her far-reaching glasses, noticing how much they laughed and how little sadness was in the face of the yellow-haired girl who ought by good rights to have been dressed in black, but who was wearing a bright little scarlet cap and jacket over a thin white dress. Matilda could tell it was thin because of the way it blew in the breeze.

  Then the other girl, the one in bright green, went out in the field with Robert Carroll, right into the plowed ground, and got up on the seat of the planting machine. The bold hussy! And Robert Carroll almost had his arm around her, helping her up into the seat!

  Matilda Coulter caught her breath and watched with all her eyes, forgetting the yellow-haired girl for the moment, but then when she turned her glass back to the place where she had left her, there she was sitting down on the grass shoulder to shoulder with Murray MacRae, looking at something he held. What was it? A book! A little book! But of course the book was only an excuse for sitting close together! A flirtation, that’s what it was. So! That was the kind of girls Charles Sutherland had for daughters! Well, that was what one might expect from people who went off to the city and got rich and never came back to see their own kith and kin!

  All through the morning she kept tabs on them, and when they built a fire and began to get their lunch ready, she hurried into the telephone, which was conveniently placed so that she could see out the window while she was talking, and called up her best friend who lived on another mountain. She reported what was going on, together with he
r surmises and interpretations, until a fairly thrilling story was evolved.

  “Why, isn’t that the Sutherland girl who was engaged to the man that was shot in a speakeasy in New York by the lover of the girl he had with him?” contributed the friend who was listening.

  “Of course it is! Isn’t that awful?” said Matilda Coulter. “Well, she certainly isn’t doing much mourning today!”

  Now this friend had a daughter who taught in the same school in Portland with Joan Sutherland, and in due time the story with embellishments reached Portland and was discussed and turned over and exclaimed over. And not many days later, on a Saturday afternoon to be exact, and just after the noon dinner hour, Joan, driving the family flivver, arrived at the Sutherland house in Afton and asked for her cousin Gloria.

  Gloria was getting on her tennis shoes for an afternoon over on the MacRae court, and Vanna was changing into a pretty little sport dress that made her look like a full-blown rose when Emily Hastings came up to say that Joan was downstairs.

  Gloria’s face went stormy in an instant, and she dropped down onto the edge of the bed and let out a stifled groan.

  “Now what’s the matter?” said Vanna, whirling from the mirror where she was brushing her brown hair.

  “Oh, that awful cousin of ours is downstairs!” moaned Gloria softly. “Now our afternoon is all in hash.”

  “Nonsense!” said Vanna. “Tell her you’re sorry, but you have an engagement!”

  “You can’t, Vanna, not here! People don’t do things like that! It’s all wrong. Everybody in the state would know it before tomorrow, and you would be hurting everybody else who had been kind to you!”

  “Folly!” said Vanna. “Leave her to me then!”

  “No,” said Emily, laughing, “she particularly asked for Glory, said she wanted to see her alone. She seemed very secretive about it.”