Mrs. Bonniwell went to her room and composed herself to rest, hoping still to snatch a few minutes of actual sleep, but her mind was in a turmoil, and though she closed her eyes and lay very still, she could not keep her mind off the problems that were thickening around her.
To begin with, there was Blythe and that alarming absurd obsession she had that she was in love with an absolute stranger.
Of course, it was quite possible that this proposition of Dan’s might be a very good thing to come just now and help Blythe to forget the abrupt and fanatically inclined unknown. On the other hand, might it not be too soon to hope to have that romantic happening offset by a sensible marriage into her own set? It would be comfortable, too, to think of Blythe with a husband who was wealthy in his own right, and not dependent upon her fortune. Also, Mrs. Seavers was her friend, and she certainly would like to use her influence to help with what Dan’s mother wanted, the assurance that Dan could be saved from questionable girls, girls who were beautiful perhaps, but absolutely nothing else, just gold diggers—wasn’t that what they called such girls, always out to lure some rich young man?
On the other hand, Blythe was happy and bright just now, and they certainly were enjoying her presence in the home after her long absence at college. And it would be truly beautiful to have her with them now, with that almost unnatural glow of joy in her eyes, a real lovelight, and it was utterly useless to hope that it could change into such a glow for Dan. He wasn’t the kind that could bring romance in such an enchanted form to a girl. He was solid and cheerful and good, maybe even dependable, but not one who could easily turn Blythe’s fancied romance into love for himself. It really would be wiser in him to lay this marriage business aside until Blythe had forgotten the boy Charlie, or perhaps till word had come that Charlie was “missing in action,” or something, as it likely would pretty soon, unless he had gotten up a cock-and-bull story to storm his girl’s heart. Though somehow the letters hadn’t seemed to make him that kind of a lad either. Rather too solemn, perhaps. Strange that her girl would be interested in a staid young man like that. Stranger still that she had never said much about him before, even when she was a child in school. Well, she must talk with Blythe as soon as she returned, and she must prepare her approach and not antagonize her. She simply must find out just how her daughter felt about this marriage. It wouldn’t do for her girl to miss the chance of a happy marriage with a finely set-up young man like Dan, just because of some silly romance between herself and a young man who was confessedly going out to die.
So Mrs. Bonniwell thrashed the matter over carefully and did not get her much-needed nap. She studied over what she would say to Blythe as carefully as if it were one of her popular addresses to women’s clubs, or a speech to mold the pliable opinions of her committee. And when the duties yet before her called her from the couch, she went with half her mind occupied still with what she was going to say to Blythe that evening when they got together. All through the rest of the hours as she went from one appointment to another, the arguments were growing stronger by which she intended to lead Blythe on to see that she had no right to fill her mind with a stranger when her lifelong playmate was needing her. And then, when the late evening hour came, and Blythe arrived, her face shining with a wonderful light and real joy in her eyes, the mother began hastily to consider whether she had any argument on her whole list that could combat a joy like this. At least while it lasted it was going to be hard to turn her girl aside from the ideas that seemed to possess her.
“Oh Mother,” she said as she came in, “it was really wonderful! It was just as Charlie said in his letter. That Mr. Silverthorn spoke right to the men’s souls. They sat and listened as if they were spellbound, and I listened, too, and found more wonderful hope than I have ever heard in any sermon I listened to in church.”
“Well, now, dear, that is going pretty far. I am glad you enjoyed your evening instead of being bored as I was afraid you would be, but when you go to discounting the orthodox churches, I really can’t agree with you.”
“Oh Mother, I wasn’t discounting churches, not the real kind, but this talk tonight was something that seemed to help me so much. It made God and Christ so real that you felt as if you never could doubt Him again. And you got that feeling, just as Charlie said, that Jesus Christ was right up there on the platform beside him. You saw Him being tried, you saw His eyes, so full of love and pity and suffering for a world that was sinning against Him, and enjoying the sinning, while He was getting ready to die for that sin as if it had been His own.”
“He must be a very magnetic speaker,” said Mrs. Bonniwell, trying to explain to herself the effect of the speaker on her daughter, forgetting for the moment the subject that had filled her mind the last half of the day. “There are not many speakers who have that dramatic power to make their audience see those about whom they are speaking. It is a wonderful gift, and would be just the way to influence young men who were hungry for something different.”
“Oh Mother, it wasn’t just that,” said Blythe, struggling eagerly for words to convey the wonderful message that had reached her own heart that night. “It was like a real message sent from heaven, just as Charlie said. He made you see yourself and how sinful you were to have ignored a love like His.”
All unseen, Mr. Bonniwell had come softly in the front door and now was standing in the hall, listening as his daughter went on, but Mrs. Bonniwell had reverted to her promise of the afternoon for which she had been preparing for several hours, and smoothly she assented to what her daughter was saying, and then skillfully slid into a different note.
“Well, that sounds very beautiful, dear,” she said graciously. “Perhaps sometime we can all go somewhere and hear this wonderful man. Such orators are always worth studying, no matter what subjects they specialize in. I’d really like to hear him myself. But in the meantime, dear, I have been staying awake to tell you something that is quite as important, and must have an immediate decision.”
“Oh! Yes?” Blythe said, with a quick flash of anxiety. What was coming now? Her mother’s voice was definitely antagonistic, somehow not in sympathy with the wonderful things she had been telling about the meeting she had been attending. She dropped into a chair, yet alert, and fixed her eyes on her mother’s.
“Dan Seavers has been over here—” began her mother, floundering around in her mind for the careful approach she had planned to this interview. But Blythe put a sudden end to the subject by the finality of the tone in which she answered:
“Oh! He has! I thought he wouldn’t be suppressed very easily. So he has appealed to you also, has he, as well as to Dad? Well, Mother, you can just tell him nothing doing. I do not intend to marry him—ever—I told him so decidedly. I will not be enticed into talking it over anymore. If worse comes to worst you can tell him I love someone else. Although I don’t really think it is any of his business until I get ready to tell it myself.”
“No! Of course not,” the mother hastened to say. The thing she really wanted least was to have anybody else know anything about this absurd obsession of her daughter’s. Let it rest in quietness until it died away of its own accord. Have no publicity about it, not even to save Dan’s feelings. That was much the best policy.
“But really, Blythe, I think you owe it to Dan as an old friend, to listen to what he has to say, the plans he has made. You gain nothing by running away from anything. It is always better to face a matter clearly, politely, and in a way that you won’t regret later when you think it over.”
Blythe looked at her mother thoughtfully an instant, and then said, “All right, Mother dear. When and where do you want me to see him? Was there any special time stipulated?”
“Why no, dear, only that he wants to see you at the first possible moment because he has several plans he is trying to arrange that depend upon your answer. I think just in courtesy you owe him that.”
“Very well, Mother, I’ll go to the telephone and arrange to see him at once. It’s
best to get this thing over. Best for us both!” She turned to go out the door.
“Wait a minute, daughter,” said Mrs. Bonniwell.
Blythe paused and looked at her mother inquiringly.
“I want to suggest that you be very sure of yourself before you go into this interview. You should consider just what you would be giving up if you turn this offer down. And you can’t tell just what reaction you may bring about in Dan. He is very impulsive, you know.”
“Yes, Mother, I’ll remember. But I can’t marry a man just to keep him from marrying a chorus girl or jumping in the river. You wouldn’t have me do that, would you, Mother?”
There was a merry twinkle in Blythe’s eyes as she said it, the kind of twinkle that always brought an answering smile from her mother, no matter how much she frustrated her motherly plans, and Mrs. Bonniwell gave the smile, and said, “Why no, of course not, dear,” and Blythe turned with a laughing “thank you,” and went to the telephone.
It was not until she was gone that the mother discovered her husband standing in the shadow out in the hall by the door, and smiled at him.
“What a child she is!” said the mother, half worried, half pleased. “She doesn’t grow up very fast, does she?”
“Well, I’m not sure but she’s more grown up than her parents,” said Mr. Bonniwell, coming in and sitting down. “Personally, I think she has more sense than either of us, in more ways than one. I certainly am glad she is turning that Seavers kid down. I never liked him. He isn’t even intellectually on a par with our girl.”
“Now, John, don’t be too sure of what she is going to do. Dan had some very pleasant plans for their wedding, and you can’t tell what he may persuade her to do when she once gives him a chance to talk it over.”
“I’ll bank on our girl every time,” said her father. “If she lets that ninny wheedle her into marrying him in a hurry to repent at her leisure, I shall be dreadfully disappointed in her. Especially since she has somebody real in her heart.”
“Oh John! I think you are foolish to put so much faith in a couple of snapshots and a letter or two. You might not like this old schoolmate of hers any better than you like Dan.”
“Well, we’ll just let it rest at that and see what Blythe does,” said her father.
And then Blythe came back, smiling, as if from an unpleasant duty well done.
“When is he coming?” asked her mother.
“Right away,” said Blythe.
“Well, don’t worry about how long he stays. I’ll have your dinner saved for you if he is very long.”
“He won’t be,” said Blythe cheerfully. “I told him I could spare him only ten minutes and he had to make it snappy.”
“Blythe!” reproached her mother. “Don’t you think that was a bit rude?”
“No, Mother. It’s the language all young people are using today, and I’ve already told him once before today that I didn’t want to talk about this subject anymore.”
“Oh, my dear! But look here. Don’t you think you should get into a fresher dress? You look a bit dreary and shopworn in that dark one. At least you can do Dan the courtesy of looking fresh and neat.”
“No, Mother, I’m not holding this matter up to make myself charming. I want to get it over with. There he is now,” as the bell sounded through the house, and Blythe jumped up and ran down to the door herself instead of waiting for the servant to admit her caller.
The father, sitting in a shadowed corner of the room, smiled to himself at the summary way in which his daughter was handling this matter.
“She’s a great girl!” he said aloud, with satisfaction in his face.
The mother cast a troubled glance at him.
“Yes, but I’m afraid she is acting in haste and will do something that she will regret all her life,” she said, with a deep sigh.
“She won’t!” said her father, with confidence. “You’ll see.”
They sat in silence, listening, as they heard low voices murmuring in the room. Then suddenly they heard the man’s voice rise. They heard his footsteps tramping back and forth in the library, and the mother cast an anxious glance toward her husband, but he sat quietly amused and waiting.
Low voices again, quiet, gentle murmur. That would be Blythe. Then a deep, angry growl, then loud angry words, and suddenly the tramping of an angry young man’s feet as he went out of the house and slammed the door furiously behind him. “There! John! I was afraid she would offend him, and she must have done it. I just knew she ought not to have gone at this thing in such a hurry.”
“Alice, look here, don’t you know enough about that young man yet after all these years to understand that he would be offended at anybody who refused to fall in with his plans? He wants to be it, and he won’t stand for anybody who hinders him.”
“It’s very strange, John, that you should so easily be won over to someone you don’t know at all.”
“No, it’s not strange, Alice, Blythe’s Charlie is real, and this Dan isn’t. And someday you’ll see it yourself and be glad you had a daughter with a lot of common sense.”
Then they heard Blythe’s light step coming up the stairs, and Blythe’s voice singing softly a hymn she had heard at the meeting.
“Keep me in the shadow of the cross,
Purge my weary soul of its dross,
Fill me with Thy spirit till the whole wide world may see
The light that shone from Calvary,
Shining out through me.”
A soft light came into her father’s eyes as he caught the words.
“She seems to be pretty happy, whatever it is,” he said gently.
“Oh, John, do you think so?” said the mother. “Such gloomy, pathetic words. She’s just the type that can be made into a fanatic so easily. Talking about purging her soul of dross! As if that child ever had a grain of dross in her. You know yourself she’s always been the sweetest, most reasonable child. I almost never had to punish her, even when she was very little. Talk about dross in her, it’s ridiculous! I tell you, that boy she thinks she’s in love with is the wrong type for her. He’ll just lead her into being a whining old woman before her time.”
“Perhaps he won’t,” said the father, with a twinkle in his eyes. “Perhaps he’ll die, as he told her he was likely to. I suppose you’d be glad if he would.”
“Now, John, you know I never was so awful as that I would want anyone to die before his time. But I certainly don’t see that he’s good for Blythe.”
“No,” sighed the father, “you’d rather see her tied to that weak-chinned Dan, who will go on all his life getting drunk whenever he wants to, and going wild over one nightclub dancer or singer and then another after he’s taken his wife safely home and got her to bed out of the way. That’s the way you want it, isn’t it?”
“John! You know Dan isn’t that kind of fellow! You know he’s fine and clean and self-respecting.”
“Self-respecting, yes, but I’m afraid not fine nor clean. My dear, you have lived a fairly sheltered life, and you don’t know all I know about the ways of the world today. But I can vouch for it that Dan Seavers is well started on the way to such a life as I just described, and I should never be willing to consent to his marrying my daughter, no, not even if he professed a thousand times to reform.”
Then Blythe came into the room and her father looked up. “Well, you did that in fairly good time. How did you come off?”
“Why, Daddy, I just told him I didn’t want to marry him, now or ever, and that was all. Of course he was pretty haughty and pretty mad, but he went away.”
“But didn’t you let him tell you all his lovely plans for the wedding?”
“Oh yes, Mother, he began before I was fairly seated, and he told everything, even to how the wedding invitations were to be worded and what kind of trousseau he wanted me to have. The next applicant won’t have very much to do to prepare,” and she gave a funny little wry smile. “That’s Dan all over. He always planned out everything fo
r the whole crowd and made them do it, whether they wanted to or not. However, he’s good at that sort of thing, and if I had been in for a big show-off, he might have tempted me. But it all seems so vapid and utterly out of keeping with the times to get up a big showy wedding when a lot of the boys, our good friends, are across the seas somewhere, dying for our country. However, when he had finished and asked me if I didn’t think it was a lovely plan I said, yes, it would make a beautiful wedding. But that I did not want to be the bride, that he would always be my old friend and playmate, but marriage on those terms was impossible for me. I wished him well, said I was glad he had his commission and such fine prospects, and I hoped he would soon find the right girl to share it with him. And that made him very angry. So he said he had no doubt but that he would, and he made quick work of getting away.”
“Well, that’s good!” said her father. “And now, Blythe, I wish you’d go on and finish telling about that meeting you attended. I was interested to hear just what that Silverthorn speaker said.”
“Oh yes, Dad, I’d love to tell you.”
Then the mother rose.
“I do hope you’ll excuse me,” she said wearily. “This isn’t anything really important, and I feel I must get some rest if I am to go on with those convention plans tomorrow. Good night.”
Chapter 16
On the high seas, Charlie Montgomery found himself at last, on his way to an enemy-infested land, going on a mission of extreme danger, every step of which was fraught with peril, and knowing that one false move would bring forfeit of his life, or worse.
Charlie himself did not know how his going had been arranged, nor by what various routes he was to travel, save that the final stage of his journey would be by plane. He would receive his last order before he set out for his final goal, and he did not yet know the exact location of that goal. But his real business, when located, would be to discover what was going on among the enemy, what was planned; and to send out alarms by well-planned and efficient means: by underground, by hidden radio in code, by trusted messenger, by any way that could get the information back to Allied lines in time to frustrate what the enemy had planned. Sooner or later, of course, he knew he would likely be discovered, and shot or imprisoned or buried in an internment camp to waste away, or maybe even be beheaded or tortured. But he had come, knowing all this, and ready to lay down his life for the great cause of freedom and righteousness, for putting down the tyrants, and setting oppressed peoples free. And he was going now in the strength of the Lord. For he firmly believed that God had called him to this work, and he was ready to sacrifice his life.