Blue Ruin

  Amelia walked heavily to the hall door as the guest descended and in a grim voice announced clearly. “Supper is ready!”

  The old lady looked up with a twinkle in her eye. It began to look as if life was going to be interesting.

  Dana helped his grandmother to the head of the table, although his mother always did the serving from her seat just at the right of her mother-in-law. The old lady kept an eye and hand thus on everything, just as if she were able to be about like other people.

  Ella Smith entered the dining room deprecatingly. She had a feeling that already her child needed apology. She regarded Jessie Belle with a sort of fascinated horror.

  Jessie Belle looked startlingly out of place in the old-fashioned room, with her high heels, her entirely bare arms, and her vivid, painted lips.

  She made the initial mistake of ignoring the old lady, merely tossing her a scornful nod when she was elaborately presented by Justine, and turning at once to Dana with some light remark, as if he and she were the only two people really in the room.

  The old lady’s keen little black eyes took her all in, cosmetics, nude stockings, bare knees, short skirt, and long earrings, and when they were well seated she held up the ceremony of grace just as Dana was about to bow an embarrassed head.

  “Dana, I wish you would go to the top drawer of my bureau and bring me my black and white knit shawl.”

  Dana looked up in astonishment, but arose at once, went to the parlor bedroom which had always been Madame Whipple’s, and brought the shawl.

  There was a moment’s embarrassed silence while he was gone, which the old lady did not break by explanation. Amelia used it to cast an anxious eye over the table and make sure she had forgotten nothing. Justine tried to fill it with an apologetic smile at her guests. Jessie Belle was taking a frank inventory of the meal.

  Dana came with the shawl and was about to wrap it around his grandmother’s shoulders, when she waved him away imperatively.

  “It’s not for me,” she said ungraciously. “Put it on her,” and she waved her hand toward Jessie Belle. “She needs it. The evening’s getting cool.”

  “Why, Grandma deah!” gasped Justine anxiously, casting a deprecating glance at Jessie Belle.

  Dana stood awkwardly holding the hideous knit shawl and looking perplexedly from his grandmother to the girl.

  “Put it on yourself, boy,” giggled Jessie Belle. “I pass. I’m roasted to a frazzle now. Nobody could ever drag a shawl on me, could they, Ella?”

  Ella Smith shrank and shivered and tried to look as if her offspring were addressing someone else.

  Amelia came to the rescue crustily.

  “Sit down, Dana, and let’s get this meal started. Everything’s getting cold.”

  Dana tossed the old shawl to a chair and went to his place, mumbled a grace, and unfolded his napkin angrily. He flashed a glance of contempt at his grandmother who returned it with a twinkle of grim humor, but said nothing.

  Amelia had solved the problem of placing her guests by seating Jessie Belle at Madame Whipple’s left, Dana at the foot of the table with Ella Smith beside him, and Justine at his right and next to herself. She thought by this bit of diplomacy to separate her son as far as possible from this obnoxious girl. Amelia Whipple had suddenly begun to feel that Lynette Brooke was a wonderful girl, the finest girl she knew. It seemed to her that she had always felt so. This girl with the fanciful name had ignored her so utterly from the first moment of meeting that it seemed to Amelia she had made no more impression upon her than if she had been a ghost.

  But Amelia’s plan to separate the girl from her son did not work. For all Jessie Belle cared they might have been seated side by side on a lone hillside. She carried on a rapid banter of words with Dana in a loud voice interspersed with much laughter and interesting phrases of speech which were most amazing to Amelia, and to Grandma Whipple, a rare treat. Grandma sat in silence grimly eating her dinner while the banter was going on, biding her time.

  At last there came a silence and Grandma leaned over pleasantly toward Jessie Belle, and in a good clear voice said, “Can you reach me the biscuits, Jezebel?”

  Jessie Belle turned and gave her a stare.

  “Oh, Grandma!” corrected the horrified Justine. “Her name is Jessie, Belle. You misunderstood me.”

  “I understood perfectly, Justine. Will you please pass me the biscuits, Jezebel?”

  Jessie Belle laughed and passed the biscuits.

  “Why, of course I will, Grandma. What a gorgeous way to pronounce my name. I never thought of it before. Wouldn’t the girls simply shout if they heard it! I believe I’ll adopt it. It’s quite original. None of the girls have a dashing name like that. They’d call me Jez of course. I believe I will. Ella, you better start in calling me Jez at once. I mean it; I really do. I’ll write to Eve tonight and make them address my letters that way. Miss Jezebel Barbour Smith. How’ll that please you, Ella? If I stick the Barbour in it’ll be a go with you, I know. Oh, boy! I gotta name for sure now. Dana you’re to call me Jez from now on, see?”

  “Jessie!” burst forth the horrified Ella Smith. “Belle, I mean,” she added hurriedly, “you really are the limit! I hope you’ll all excuse her.” She cast a deprecating glance around the table, “Jessie Belle’s a great joker. That’s why she calls me Ella. We’re always such good chums, you know,” she finished lamely.

  “Yes, we are not!” chimed in Jessie Belle like a chant. Lifting daintily manicured fingers tinted and polished to the last degree and several times beringed, she blew a most offensive little kiss in her mother’s direction, with an after twist like the curve of a tennis ball in a good, skillful cut that drifted it over to Dana’s direction where it turned up having lost its offense.

  Amelia fairly snorted and was sure she heard Grandma cackling under her breath, though her face was perfectly impassive.

  “Oh, Jessie Belle!” giggled Justine, spatting her hands together childishly. “How funny you are! That was perfectly delicious! Oh, we are going to enjoy you so much!”

  Amelia suddenly shoved her chair back with a harsh grating sound and went with heavy footsteps into the kitchen for more cream. Even her back was eloquent of her feelings, but Justine was fairly launched now and carried on a byplay of fulsome flattery, while Jessie Belle happily took the lead in the conversation, addressing it mainly to Dana who was frowningly eating his dinner and saying little. He was in one of his worst moods and was out of sorts with his whole world. It was like him to feel that this giddy little girl who had caused all the trouble was being martyred by them all, and to blame his family for the way they were treating her. Dana was angry with Lynette for being hurt, angry with his grandmother for being a hornet driving in her sting wherever it pleased her, angry with his mother for being so ungracious, and angry with Justine for being a fool. He was beginning to feel that out of them all only he and Jessie Belle had good sense. He tried to soothe this uneasiness about Lynette by realizing his own superiority. That really helped a lot.

  So Dana gave himself over to bantering with Jessie Belle and got what Jessie Belle herself would have called “quite a little kick” out of showing his family how well he understood her jazzy slang, and how neatly he could reply in what he knew must be to them almost an unknown tongue. He felt that they were saying, “Behold, how this our great scholar and theologian can stoop to understand the simplest foolishness and be at home in any atmosphere!” He felt that this was one of the attributes of a good minister, that he should be able to adapt himself to anyone, high or low. It was like Paul, the great preacher, who when in Rome did as the Romans—no, how was that? Oh, “all things to all men,” of course that was the quotation, and Dana swelled on to a more comfortable position with regard to himself.

  Of course Lynette would have gotten over her huff by the time they reached her house and be ready. He knew Lynn. It was not like her to be rude and pettish especially when there were strangers by. She would go and be as sweet as usual, and by the t
ime the evening was over she would smile and they would plan to go somewhere tomorrow, and it would all be forgotten. It was a little tough on Lynette, of course, his not being able to go to her house to supper when she had planned it so long beforehand. Lynette was sort of sentimental about things like that, keeping days, and things, but then, she must learn not to be childish, and really this was nothing special, just a chance invitation given some two or was it three years before when they were both little more than children. They were grown up now, and Lynn really must put away childish things and be a woman. Oh, well, he would explain this all carefully to her tomorrow, and she would see, just as she had sweetly yielded that afternoon when he had gone into details. Of course she ought to take his word for it without the details. But she would grow to that.

  So Dana put his uneasiness aside and entered into Jessie Belle’s talk with a gaiety that made his Aunt Justine flush all over her pasty face with an elderly pleasure and cast a furtive, triumphant glance in Amelia’s direction; and made Amelia set the coffee cups down in their saucers with a sharp little click when she handed them around, and shut her lips hard, and resolve to invite Lynette over to spend the afternoon and take dinner the very next day. Let Lynette come and fight this battle; she herself was unfitted to cope with this hateful little painted creature, but Lynette could. She would go over wholesale to Lynette. What a fool she had been to think Lynette wasn’t good enough for Dana. Why, she hadn’t ever known there were fools of girls in the world like this one!

  Grandma Whipple sat and ate her biscuits, bite by bite, buttering them thoroughly and thoughtfully with her palsied hand, and sometimes lifting a knowing eye in which crouched a wicked little twinkle, to glance furtively ‘round the table. But she said no more. Only Amelia fancied she heard a breath of cackling laughter now and then from the grim lips as the talk went on.

  It developed at length from Jessie Belle’s banter that Dana and she were going to a picture that evening, and Justine lifted her large, limpid eyes to Dana’s face and said in her most Bostonian accent, “How lovely of you Dana, deah! So thoughtful!”

  Dana wanted to slap her.

  Dana would have liked to slap Jessie Belle also. Why didn’t she know enough to keep quiet about things? He must make her understand that it wasn’t wise to let his family know everything if she wanted to have a comfortable time. Now they would raise the roof at his going off to a picture show. His mother and grandmother disapproved of the movies. They had read a great deal against them in their church paper. They thought Grandfather Whipple would not have gone to them if he had been living. Now there would be a family row! Dana hated family rows. He avoided them on every possible occasion. If he could not avoid them he faced about and made a worse one on his own account which stopped the first one instantly. He really could make a pretty bad row all by himself when he tried. But one didn’t wish to do that when there were strangers by if it could be avoided. He watched his mother anxiously under his lashes. Dana’s lashes were very long and black. They swept low when he arranged them for ambush, giving him an aspect of a formidable personage who was not to be lightly approached.

  But Dana’s mother was not afraid of him tonight.

  “Isn’t Lynette going?” she asked sharply, speaking for the first time since she had ordered him into his seat.

  Dana lifted reproachful eyes and answered haughtily.

  “Certainly, Mother. We’re going up for her at once. I told her to be ready at seven.”

  Justine looked anxiously toward Jessie Belle, and Jessie Belle showed the gleam of her little pointed teeth behind her carmine lips and gave a twisted toss of her chin, with an almost imperceptible lifting of eyebrows and shoulders. Was Jessie Belle trying to let Justine know that she would be equal to any Lynette on the calendar? That she would show Lynette “where to get off?” Was that the phrase they used? Justine was tremendously flattered and delighted.

  “Oh, Jessie Belle, you are delicious,” she gurgled into her napkin, and Jessie Belle half closed one eye and stuck out her lips in a little face toward Dana again, till Justine almost choked laughing at her.

  “Perfectly delicious,” she gurgled.

  Dana turned and dealt her an extinguishing look which quieted her for the moment, but her spirit rose joyously with the sense that there had been a camaraderie established between this girl and herself. Jessie Belle understood just how she felt about Lynette and Dana, and Jessie Belle would take a hand at things from now on.

  But Dana’s mother could not let things go so loosely. She gathered up her courage to protest.

  “But Dana, I thought you didn’t care for movies. I thought you felt it was not fitting for a—”

  But Dana interrupted her hurriedly with a frown.

  “You certainly misunderstood me, Mother. I merely said a student had no time for such amusement. I see no harm—of course it depends on the movie—but I see no harm in a little relaxation now and then. Mother, could we have our dessert now? It is getting late and we really ought to be on our way in ten minutes at the latest.”

  Amelia arose with a pained look on her face and began to remove the plates. She did this with quietness and a skilled technique that made it seem as if the dishes were moving off of themselves without the exertion of anyone. Amelia knew how to do it with the least possible effort. She never made an unnecessary move and accomplished the maximum with each motion.

  Amelia served the dessert in silence. It was strawberry shortcake, the old-fashioned kind made of flaky biscuit dough, split, buttered, and filled with the great luscious strawberries that grow in New York state, with the tang of the long, cold winters in their spicy flavor. There were more berries on the top, with powdered sugar, and a big bowl of whipped cream to put over it. Jessie Belle exclaimed with pleasure, “Oh, boy! Lead me to it! Say, Ella, I’m glad I came. How about you?”

  Amelia set her plate down grimly without a word. How she was going to stand this girl for a whole long summer she didn’t see. There was a choking sensation of tears in her throat as she turned to give Dana his shortcake. Why didn’t her boy, descendant of the great Whipple grandfather, see that girl was not his equal? How could Dana be so blind?

  But then, of course Dana had to be polite to guests in the house, or at least of course he thought he had to, though he needn’t have gone quite so far with it. He might have made her understand that he had an engagement. She herself would see by tomorrow at least that the girl knew that Dana was as good as engaged. It must have been the girl’s fault of course. Girls were that way in these days—all but Lynette. And Dana was so attractive of course. She couldn’t be blamed for wanting him to show her attention. Probably it wasn’t Dana’s fault at all. Probably by tomorrow he would fix things up so that she wouldn’t bother him. Probably Lynette would regulate it all when she got to see how things were. Of course, Dana wasn’t to blame. So she tried to explain to her tired heart while she minced at a bit of shortcake and pretended to be finishing her supper.

  Then she had to see her boy go off into the evening glow with that girl! It made her furious!

  Just as they had watched Dana in the morning go off with Lynette, so they watched these two now, Grandma and Amelia and Justine, Amelia hovering back in the shadows with a pile of dessert plates in one hand and a bunch of forks in the other, her eyes full of smoldering fires and unshed tears. Ella Smith had run down to the gate to give Jessie Belle a gauzy scarf shot through with rainbow spangles which her daughter had demanded to be found for her, and the three were alone for the moment.

  Small and slim with her sleek little dark head almost up to Dana’s shoulder; her bare arm linked in Dana’s intimately; her curly lashed eyes turned up to his confidingly; her red lips pouted out teasingly with elusive dimple flickering in and out; with her short, blue skirts and her long, slim legs in nude-colored stockings; her shining patent leather heels twinkling, Jessie Belle looked like an abnormal child hanging on Dana’s arm as they walked away in the sunset glow up the hill toward Ly
nette’s house.

  “Jez-e-bel!” murmured Grandma Whipple half under her breath as if she were chanting a line of an imprecatory psalm.

  “Oh, Grandma! How quaint you are!” burbled Justine from behind her chair in the shadow of the room. “But isn’t she a darling? Doesn’t she look just like a lovely flower? I think she’s like a flower!”

  “Yes,” said Grandma, “blue ruin!” And her keen old eyes sought the smokey blue of the distant hill across the valley.

  Chapter 8

  1920s

  New England

  The Brooke telephone was on a little table in the front hall close to the coat closet. The cord of the telephone was long enough to reach into the closet, and when anyone wished to carry on a private conversation or shut out the noises of the house, it was easy to step inside this coat closet and secure a private booth. Mrs. Brooke had stepped into the closet with the telephone almost as soon as she began talking, so that the three who waited at the dining room table could get no clue to whom she was talking.

  Lynette made no further pretense eating. She sat with tense expression, her hands clasping each other tightly in her lap. Could that be Dana? And what was her mother saying to him? Surely she could be trusted not to tell Dana anything about this being her birthday! Lynette’s proud, sensitive nature shrank unutterably from having Dana know, now that he had stayed away and forgotten. Her mother must not beg him to come. She simply must not. Almost Lynette started up again to go and warn her mother and then thought better of it and forced herself to relax. But the thought was beating itself over and over again in her brain, Dana had forgotten the birthday which he had known and kept scrupulously for years. He had forgotten their unspoken tryst to which she had invited him two years before. He could stay away just to be polite to a stranger. Even if his Aunt Justine had insisted, Dana well knew how to have his own way and Dana would never have been persuaded to stay if he had wanted to come, if he had felt that this was more important. It followed then that Dana had not been impressed with the importance of the day, had not cared more than anything else to come to her. He could not have been looking forward to it through the years as she had been. There was tragedy written in Lynette’s face though she did not know it.