“Diana, I can’t listen to any more of this silly twaddle over the telephone. You simply must come home at once! If you think you are grown up, then act it. This isn’t the way a refined, well-bred woman acts toward her mother. I want you to come home now and get this straightened out at once. It breaks my heart to have any differences come between us. You must come without delay. I am sure I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown over this, and you must come today if you want to prevent any such result.”
“Well, Mother, I’m sorry I can’t come for an appeal like that, but it just happens that I have promised to go with Beryl this morning, and she really needs me. There is quite a good deal involved in this. We’re going down to the canteen to teach the servicemen to sing a chorus for an hour on the radio that we’re preparing them for, and I have to play for the singing, because we have only one copy of the music and I’m the only one who knows it.”
“How silly! Let them choose another song then.”
“It’s too late, Mother. Beryl has already gone, and I wouldn’t know how to reach her. She had to go early to get the chairs arranged. And besides, it’s almost time for their last rehearsal, and they come on at two o’clock, so you see I’ve got to rush, even now.”
“Well, then, come on the three o’clock train.”
“But Mother, we’re due at a dinner right after that. We’ve barely time to get dressed after we get back from the broadcast. And Mother, it’s just as I told you. Every minute is arranged for up to the last of next week. I really couldn’t change things. It would be awfully rude after Mr. Sanderson has spent so much time and money arranging to get us tickets and reservations for all the activities we’ve planned.”
“But Diana, I don’t know you. You never acted like this before when I asked you as a favor to me to do something.”
“Mother, you were always reasonable, all my life. You never wanted me to do rude things, simply for a whim. I am quite sure anything you want to say about this matter of Bates can wait until I come. And I’m sure if I came now you would get no other answer from me than the one I have given. I am not engaged to Bates, and I never will be, no matter how desirable you may think he is. It would be I who would have to live with him afterward, and that I never will do.”
“Oh, Diana. How you are grieving me! I am sure when you think this over you will be ashamed, and I shall be waiting to see you arrive on a later train this evening.”
“No, Mother, I can’t do that. Good-bye now, I must go.” And Diana, in response to a call from downstairs, hung up the receiver, snatched her hat and gloves, and hurried down the stairs and out the door. She was almost sure she heard the phone ringing again as she went down the street, but the bus was almost to the corner and she had to run to catch it.
Diana, as she settled down in the only vacant seat, was not very happy in her heart. Somehow it came to her that this did not seem to be a very good way to begin a Christian life, being almost rude to her beloved mother, refusing to grant her request. But what else could she have done? If there had been any real need of her at home, if her mother had really been ill, of course she would have gone at once, no matter how many engagements had to be broken. But she knew her mother’s ways, and she was well aware that if she had been quite free to go it would only mean a long session of arguments, with Bates dragged into them, until she was wearied of her life. She could not yield this time and get into the toils of those two again. Too many times she had been argued with until she scarcely knew how to answer, and this was what she had come off here for, to get away from that demand to marry Bates, or at least to let her mother give her an announcement party and be in the public eye in such a way that she could not get away from it without seeming to be dishonorable, or what would be worse in her mother’s eyes, without making it appear that Bates had let her down. How her soul shrank from such dishonorable actions!
All the way into the canteen hall where they were to practice, Diana sat with closed eyes and quietly prayed in her heart, Dear Lord, show me what to do. Help me somehow to keep my obligations and yet not to hurt my dear mother.
Now, she said in her heart as she got out of the bus at her destination, please help me to forget this and do my duty till it is over, and then show me what is right.
The rehearsal went well. Diana roused from her distractions and played with abandon and interest, and the sailors sang well. The radio man came in as they were singing the final song, and he applauded. “That’s great!” he said genially. “If you do that well this afternoon, you’ll bring the house down.”
The rest of the day was so full that Diana had no time to think anymore of her own perplexing problems. She had cast them off on her new Burden-Bearer, and she was just resting on that.
But when they got back to the Sanderson home just at dinnertime, there was the telephone ringing, and Diana looked up alertly as the maid said, “Miss Winters, that phone is for you. Your mother has been trying to get you all the afternoon.” Then the great burden of worry dropped down upon her young shoulders again like a heavy weight. As she went toward the telephone, her hands trembling almost too much to take down the receiver, she was praying in her heart, Oh my heavenly Father, please help me. Show me what to say, make me understand what I ought to do.
Then came her mother’s voice, no longer sharp and implacable. Just hurried, almost apologetic.
“Diana, is that you? Have you come at last? Well, I’ve been trying to get you for the last two hours. I’m glad you’ve come, for I have to leave almost at once. Your father is preparing to go to California for a couple of weeks and he wants me to go with him, so you better delay your return till I get back. I have just been talking with Bates, and he has received unexpected orders to report back at camp as soon as he can get there. He will be back again later, and all these matters can be settled then. So now you can keep your promises to your friend and turn over in your mind this question about your engagement, and see if you don’t want to change your mind. So I hope you will be satisfied. But meantime, I forgive you for your rudeness, and I hope you will be able to see things sensibly by the time I get back. I will write you on the way and give you our address later so you can write me. Meantime, have a good time, darling, and get ready in your mind for a grand big announcement party when we get back. Now good-bye, dearest. I must go. Your father is calling.”
As Diana hung up the receiver and turned to go, her face was alight.
“What’s the matter, dear?” asked Beryl. “You look as if you had received a reprieve.”
“I have,” said Diana smiling. “I was afraid I was going to have to go home at once and miss all your nice times, but now the plans have changed and I can stay till we get back from Washington.”
“How grand!” said Beryl. “But somehow the look on your face was more than just being glad over a good time.”
“Well, it was,” said Diana. “I was wondering if God always helps fix troublesome things for you when you cry to Him for help?”
Beryl’s face grew suddenly grave. “Oh, I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I ever tried it, but I shouldn’t be surprised if He did. You ask the boys. They’ll know.”
“I will,” said Diana with a sweet look in her eyes. “But oh, I’m so glad God worked this out for me, for I was terribly afraid I was going to have to go home and have a very hard time, with my mother arrayed against me and an old playmate determined to marry me right away—and I didn’t want to.”
“My dear!” said Beryl. “I’m so glad for you. I knew you didn’t love that man you talked about yesterday. Well, now we can have a nice time going to Washington, can’t we?”
“Yes,” said Diana with a happy smile. “And I’m so glad that my mother isn’t angry with me. She has always been very domineering and insisted I should go her way, but I do love her, and I hate to have her out of harmony with me.”
“Of course you do, dear. I understand.”
“Beryl, you are the most understanding friend I have. Ex
cept perhaps my father. He always seems to know what I mean and to feel just as I do about things. He’s a wonderful daddy!”
“So is mine,” said Beryl. “But my mother usually understands, too.”
“Yes, you have a wonderful mother!”
“Yes, I have,” said Beryl, “except perhaps sometimes she’s a little bit afraid of things I want to do.”
“But that’s because she loves you so and wants to put a hedge around you to protect you.”
“Yes,” said Beryl, “and perhaps if you would study the subject carefully, you might find that the things your mother wants for you are things she thinks would protect you.”
Diana studied her friend’s face seriously. “Perhaps you’re right,” she admitted slowly. “She probably thinks Bates’ riches and power and influence will be a wall around me to make me safe everywhere, and she doesn’t realize at all what it would be to marry someone I do not love. She is so thoroughly sold on Bates herself, having always admired him from the time he was a child, that she cannot take it in that I am not. She thinks I haven’t grown up yet and don’t know my own mind, but that it would be all right if I found myself married to such a wonderful young man. This, I suppose, is because I was so undecided myself when I came away from home. I was trying to please everybody except myself, and yet not yield to my own uneasy feelings. Thank you for giving me that thought. I must treat my mother much more tenderly in the future. I can see I have not always done that, especially yesterday on the telephone. But I am thankful that she was in such a hurry getting ready to go with Father that I think for the time being she had forgotten it. I must write her a sweet letter and help her to keep forgetting.”
And then there came a call from the Graemes, proposing a tennis match for the morning, dinner in town, and a meeting in the evening at which a wonderful Bible teacher was to speak, and the conversation ended with joy on their faces. Still there was something about it that could not be forgotten, and its essence returned to Diana’s newly awakened conscience again and again.
Chapter 15
The next two days were quiet ones, little excursions planned on the spur of the moment. It was taken for granted that all the group would go everywhere together. No more apologies for keeping up this constant friendly fellowship. It was as if they were a lot of children, brought up together, glad that they belonged together. Yet behind it all was the constant realization that this could not last forever. It would soon be over when the boys were sent somewhere. There would be lonely days after this delightful companionship.
They were taking every day as if it were something precious, dealt out to them hour by hour, knowing that when it was gone there might be no return of the joy they were spending so lavishly. Not that they thought it out in these phrases. They would none of them perhaps have reached the place where they would be willing to admit how much it all meant to them, but at night, when each was by himself, they would think the day over almost breathlessly and plan that the next day should be savored even more happily.
They were doing all their planning toward their trip to Washington for the broadcast, as if it were a kind of climax of their happiness. When they returned, well, there would doubtless be something soon to separate them, at least for a time. For one thing, Diana was likely to be called home by an irate and demanding mother, and she had hinted more than once that there would be problems for her to solve, problems that would not only affect her new Christian life but might even make trouble for her at home. Rodney had thought a great deal about the few words she had dropped along these lines and had been praying for her, not only that her anticipated trials might not be as great as she feared, but that she might be able to bear them, even if they were worse than feared.
She had noticed that a great gentleness had come upon him of late, and when they walked together his words would be low and quiet, and now and again his strong comforting hand would be laid over hers as it rested on his arm. And once, when they were walking so, quietly, on the shady side of a moonlit street, it suddenly came to her to wonder what it would be if this were Bates walking so with her, and she knew that she would shrink from such contact with his hand. Bates’ immaculately cared-for hands! And yet their touch would not be welcome to her, would not be so comforting, would be almost revolting to her. Then suddenly she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she did not love Bates Hibberd.
Oh, she had been saying so for several days, to her mother over the telephone, to Beryl, tentatively to herself, reassuring herself, just to be sure she hadn’t made the mistake that her mother and Bates would keep telling her she had made. For she had been dreading the time when she would have to go home, very soon, and meet all this again. How she had been dreading it! But now, she was not afraid anymore, for something new had come to take the place in her heart that had been so uncertain. What was this something new? Was it just that she had a new friend who had taught her to love the Lord? Was that a little thing? It seemed so great, so wonderful. And it was something apart from the friendly relations of earth. Something that almost seemed like a holy relationship, one that had nothing to do with world-ideas or jealousies. A relationship that had its center in Jesus Christ, that did not base its being on good looks, although there was plenty of that if one were counting it, or on wealth or even on possession. It was something bigger than worldly relationships.
Of course it would be a wonderful thing if a man like this one loved her and wanted to marry her. She would not have to wait and ponder over a question like that. She would feel that just to walk with a young man like Rodney through her life on earth would be the greatest blessing heaven could bestow. But she had not a thing like that to consider. He had not asked her, and it was not a thing that was likely to come to her. She was not good enough for him. And she had not been thinking of love with reference to him. But she could see that God had sent him her way that she might know and understand what a man whose life was hid with Christ in God could be, and how she must on no account link her life with a man who did not know Christ. And while this was no time for her to be considering any new idea of marriage, it certainly was a time to decide whom she should not marry.
And suddenly with that thought, a great burden rolled away from her. She did not have to consider marriage anymore. Not unless God sometime sent her a companion of His own choosing. She might be just happy now and have a good time, learning to know God and to follow her new Guide.
But while Diana was thinking these thoughts, Jessica was on her way to a consultation with the husband she had married so hastily, called to him by an insistent telegram, peremptorily ordering her attendance at once.
Jessica was very much annoyed about it because Louella had particularly promised to have some more news for her this very morning, news that would have reference to the immediate movements of the Graeme brothers, and she had not had time to get Louella on the telephone before she took the train designated in her husband’s orders. She had already learned by the hardest way that it did not do to disobey orders. No one else in the world but Carver De Groot had ever been able to make Jessica do anything unless she wanted to do it, and she certainly did not want to drop her present pursuit of her former beau and go traveling away off out in what she called “the sticks” after a mere husband, from whom the glamour had long since worn off. But Carver De Groot had ways of his own, severe ways that did not waste time in coaxing. He gave the word of command and expected it to be obeyed, and one disobedience needed but the one penalty to bring about a future obedience. Jessica had learned her lesson the hard way, but she had learned. And perhaps her almost penniless condition made her the more easily adaptable.
For Carver De Groot had a deep purse, though he held the purse strings exceedingly tight. Still, there was a great wealth behind those purse strings. When they were loosened to an obedient one, there was a generous sum and sometimes a jewel now and again. So it behooved Jessica to go when he called and to cast about her a cloak of unaccustomed humility.
S
o it was with haste and a meek spirit that she walked into the old De Groot homestead, set away back from the highway amid shrubbery well hidden from curious eyes, and maintaining a shabby outward show, to further camouflage its inner glories. This quality of staid ancient shabbiness was by no means an asset to Jessica, and she had wasted many precious tears and angry words to try to change this feature but found she could not change a jot or tittle of the place. At last she began dimly to understand that behind it all there was some fixed and unchangeable reason, something that had to do with the war mysteriously, and because it frightened her to think of it, she calmly put it out of her mind. It wasn’t her problem. And when she protested that he had promised her good times—how could she have good times so far away from everything and everybody at all interesting? She was told that she need not stay there for her good times. There would be plenty of opportunities to go out and away, and she would be hindered in nothing she wanted to do except at certain times when he would demand her attendance and help, often in matters of great importance to his business. But she need not ask about that business. When the time came he would tell her all she needed to know to help him, and nothing more, so she would be in no danger of giving out forbidden information. He had impressed it upon her that he was working for the government—what one?—and she certainly knew there were many matters that for the time of war must be kept secret. So there would be no use of her asking questions just to satisfy her curiosity. In fact, she had considered this matter before marrying and decided that she would be a girl most discreet, able to keep her mouth shut and do as she was told.
So she walked hastily up the steps of the old shabby house, down the luxuriously furnished hall, to the door of her husband’s office, otherwise designated as the library.
She tapped lightly with the tip of her well-cared-for fingers a kind of a code that she had been carefully taught.