Beauty for Ashes (20 page)

“You mean against me?” asked the man of the world with a slow smile.

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly like to say that,” said Mrs. Sutherland, “but somewhere of course he has heard some of the rumors you were speaking about, and it isn’t always easy to disabuse his mind of a thing he has once heard. But of course it will all pass away and be forgotten in a few days. And it’s so kind of you to think of going to see the girls.”

There was a sinister glitter of satisfaction in Zane’s eyes as he left the Sutherland mansion and drove away, turning over his plans in his mind. It would suit him very well if he could put Mr. Sutherland in a position where he could no longer use his influence against him.

And so Emory Zane had arranged his affairs and taken his way in his big cream-colored car up to Afton.

Vanna was on the front piazza in the hammock reading when he came, and her greeting was not especially joyous. She and Gloria had planned to go to the woods in a few minutes and bring back some lovely maiden-hair ferns they had discovered in a clump by the roadside a few days before. John Hastings had dug up and readied the spot at the shady end of the porch where they wanted to put them, and they were eager to get them planted. And now this arrival was an interruption. If they were hindered very long, they would have to wait until another day for the ferns because they were due to go to MacRaes’ at five o’clock to practice some music for a meeting that evening over at Quiet Valley, and they mustn’t be late for the rehearsal.

So Vanna arose from the hammock and came slowly down the steps to meet her caller, with no very eager smile on her face. For one thing, the car with its noisy trumpets and gaudy fittings struck a wrong note in this quiet country town, and she suddenly felt that it was out of place. She cast a quick, anxious glance down across the road to the MacRae house. What would Lindsey, sweet quiet Lindsey, think of her caller? Murray, she knew, had gone into Ripley on business. He was coming back with Robert Carroll at five for the practice. Vanna hoped she could get rid of her caller before that.

“Of all things!” said Vanna lazily when she knew that she must speak. “Where in the world did you come from?”

“Straight from your home, darling!” said Emory Zane coming up the walk and taking Vanna’s hand in his for a close clasp. Then stooping, he bent over with courtly manner to kiss her fingers.

“Don’t be silly!” said Vanna sharply, snatching her hand away and aware of the color that spread over her annoyed face. This sort of thing didn’t belong up here, and she wondered why she had such a strong desire to give the man a good sharp slap on his handsome supercilious face. She wondered why she had ever been intrigued by him.

“I’ve brought you a package from your mother!” he said, handing out a suit box, which Vanna at once suspected contained clothing that her mother thought more suitable for entertaining millionaires than the clothing she had brought with her.

“Oh, that was kind of you!” she said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. “I hope you didn’t have to go far out of your way. I am afraid you did, for I can’t imagine your being interested so far out of the world as this. There really is nothing up here that you would care for, I’m afraid, unless you like views.”

“There is always
you,”
said the young man in that soft, impressive tone of his that had so often flattered her, and he looked deep into her eyes with a significance that he hoped would bring the lovely color into her face again.

“Oh, that’s so kind of you!” said Vanna, quickly slipping into the old mocking tone with which she had used to meet such flatteries at home.

“I found that Roselands was a desert without you, Vanna!” he said, his eyes seeking hers intimately, “and I’ve come to take you back again. I came just for that! And your sister, too, of course, if she would like to go,” he added formally.

Vanna laughed. “That’s quite impossible!” she said brightly. “My sister and I may be up here several weeks yet. She doesn’t feel at all happy about going home, and it’s doing her a lot of good here. But it certainly was kind of you to think of us, and we’re just as grateful as if it were possible for us to go. Won’t you come up and sit on the porch a few minutes before you start on?”

“But I’m not starting on,” said Emory Zane with that slow, lazy smile that was so sure of itself and that sinister glitter in his handsome eyes that had often fascinated her. She wondered now why it had. “I’m not starting on anywhere until you go with me. I don’t care what your sister does, but you’ve got to go back with me. Your mother wants you. She sent very insistent messages to that effect. She needs you very much right away! And”—he looked deep into her eyes again —“I need you,
darling!
Isn’t it enough that I left everything else and came up here after you? Don’t I deserve the right to take you home?”

Vanna sat down stiffly in a porch rocker and looked at him, realized that the last thing she wanted to do in life was to go back home in company with this man, and yet felt a kind of spell of his presence coming over her, a mysterious influence that in the past she had played with and been pleased to have sway her, but that now had something unpleasant, something almost frightening in it.

They argued for nearly half an hour, Vanna trying to keep her cheerful, mocking tone and yet answer firmly, but the man was persistent. He did not for an instant waver in his intention to take her with him.

Then she grew grave and almost sharp with him, and he looked at her in amused silence for a moment before he spoke. She began to hope that at last she had convinced him that she did not want to go with him.

“Well,” he said finally, as if he had given in to her decision. “If you won’t go home, you won’t I suppose, but at least you owe it to me to go out a little while with me after I have come so far for you. Come, get your hat and a wrap of some sort, for it may be cool in the evening, and we’ll take a ride over these mountains and find some nice place to dine and dance for a while.”

“No,” said Vanna almost crossly. “I can’t do that either. I have an engagement this evening to play. I have promised, and they are depending on me. I couldn’t miss it.”

“What time do you play?” asked Zane, glancing at his watch.

“Eight o’clock!” said Vanna. “But we have a rehearsal at five, and I must be there.”

“Forget the rehearsal,” the man of the world said with a smile. “Let the others do the rehearsing. You don’t need it. We can get back here by eight, and that’s enough. Now, come, let’s get started if we have to get back so soon.”

“No,” said Vanna, again much disturbed in her mind, “I
have
to be back for that rehearsal!”

“Oh, well!” said Zane with a half-offended manner. “Have it your way of course. Only I should suppose you owed me one evening to myself, after all that has passed between us!”

Vanna had a quick, frightened wonder what he meant by that, but she was too anxious to get that flashy car away from the front door before any of the MacRaes should see it, to worry over a trifling remark.

“You’ll surely get me back by half past four?” she asked searching his face suspiciously.

“We’d better go at once, before you cut the time to nothing,” he laughed.

So Vanna, much perturbed, rushed upstairs to her anxious sister who had not failed to recognize the car and the hated voice of the man she despised as a friend for her sister.

“I’ve got to go out for a little while with Emory Zane,” Vanna explained hurriedly as she smoothed her hair and hunted for a hat. “I’m sorry to stand you up on the trip for the ferns, but it seems this is the only way I can get rid of him. He came up here to try to take us both home, but of course I told him that was impossible. He says Mother sent him.”

“Oh, Vanna!” wailed Gloria in a troubled voice. “You’ll be late for the rehearsal! I know you will! And it means so much to Robert Carroll to sing that special song tonight. It just belongs with what Murray is going to say. He was telling me about it last night.”

“Well, I’ll not be late for the rehearsal. I made that a special proviso. I’m only going to get rid of him later, that’s all. Please don’t make a fuss. I’ll get back as quick as I can. Four thirty at the latest I told him.”

“You can’t trust him,” said Gloria sorrowfully. “I’m sure you can’t trust a word he says.”

“If I can’t, I’ll know the reason why!” said Vanna indignantly. “I’ll be back, and don’t you worry! You know when I say I will, I mean it!”

“Yes, I know
you,”
said Gloria, “but you don’t seem to know what you’re up against.”

“Now, Glory, for pity’s sake don’t hold me up any longer. The quicker I go the quicker I’ll get back!”

“Maybe!” said Gloria cryptically.

She refused to go down and meet Emory Zane. In fact, Vanna didn’t urge her much. She stood at the window and watched the intimate way in which Emory Zane put her sister into his sporty car, watched them go blaring down the road toward Ripley with the triple horns playing an ostentatious blasé, and saw the hired man from down the road pause in his labor and look after them wonderingly, surely identifying Vanna. Now there would be more talk and perhaps another visit from Joan! Gloria sighed deeply and turned away from the window, feeling as if she would like to cry. Did Vanna really care for that slippery snake of a man? Could she admire him after knowing these two wonderful men up here in the mountains?

And then Gloria sat down suddenly and realized that she at least would never again be able to admire the kind of men she had known all her life, Stan’s kind, the kind that went in her set at home. That was not going to be a happy outlook for herself, to be dissatisfied with all the men in her world. But her world was spoiled for her anyway, so what difference did it make? And it was good to at least know there were men like Murray and Robert somewhere in the universe, even if they were not for her. She would cherish the days that she could spend in their company, and lay by pleasant memories, even if they were not to be a part of her future.

But oh, what should she do about Vanna? Supposing she was late? Supposing she did not come at all? Her heart quaked with terrible premonition. Could Vanna be so lost to all that was fine that she could engage herself to Zane? Could she really care for him after knowing fineness and nobility? Or hadn’t she seen it? Had she just been passing the time away and half laughing still at their lack of sophistication?

Now it happened that that very afternoon Murray had gone to Ripley on an errand and had stopped on the way back for a few minutes’ chat with Robert. They had been sitting on the porch talking of their work and planning their program for a meeting they were holding in Quiet Valley that evening.

After a little silence, Murray spoke. “How about Vanna, Bob? Does she know the Lord? I haven’t been able to make her out. She seems interested and yet she says so little. Have you had any opportunity to find her out?”

“I’ve had opportunity,” said Robert sadly. “Just had a talk with her yesterday, but I haven’t met with much response. We’ve talked, that is, I’ve talked and she has listened respectfully but has said almost nothing. A smile, a kind of wistful, questioning look. That’s about all. Perhaps I imagined even that. She has simply been noncommittal. No, I’m afraid the answer is no!” He sighed deeply.

“Yet one might easily take it for granted that she was in thorough sympathy. She has seemed interested in the work.”

“Yes, politely so!” said Robert. “How about Gloria? Is she saved?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid,” said Murray. “Sometimes I think she isn’t ‘far from the kingdom.’ She’s fascinated with the study of the Bible, but I don’t know how much of the spiritual truth has reached her. She doesn’t say much either, occasionally asks leading questions that show she has been thinking. Bob, I wonder if you have felt as I’ve been feeling? I’m almost sure you have—that we have no business as yielded Christians going on with those two girls?”

It seemed as if the words were torn from Murray’s heart.

“Bob,” he went on, “I’ve been hearing a voice in my ears for days,
Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers! Come ye out and be ye separate! Can two walk together except they be agreed?
Bob, I don’t know what
you
think, but I’ve been on my knees before God over this thing, and I’ve come to a fork in the road. There’s no question of the way for me.
You
know, Bob, there’s no path for me but the one
He
chooses, no matter what it may mean to me!”

“I know it, old man, He’s been speaking to me, too, and of course there’s no question of what we must do. I believe that at first our Master purposely threw us together so that the girls might hear the truth and come face-to-face with Him through the Word. But they have heard now, and I believe our work is over. All we can do is to follow His leading and leave the rest to Him.”

There was solemn understanding silence between the friends, and then Robert spoke again. “I’ve been thinking, too,” said Robert, “all this afternoon, ever since that handsome car went by with Vanna in it, that after all, no matter if the girls were saved, and no matter how much we are prospered in the future, it isn’t at all likely that either you or I would be able to match our fortunes with the fortunes of two such girls as that. They are out of our class, that’s all!”

“That’s true, too,” said Murray thoughtfully, “but I’m not thinking so much about that. The only class that really counts is the spiritual class. We’re not to go out of that. ‘Come ye out … be ye separate,’ says the Word. The other doesn’t really count so much after all, if it be among born-again ones. Money and social prominence are
worldly
separations, not heavenly.”

“Think so?” said Carroll. “Perhaps you’re right, but it might not be so easy to persuade rich relations to think so.”

“Well, I hadn’t got so far as that,” laughed Murray. “I’m only concerned to be ‘in the way’ so the Lord can lead me to what He wants me to do, even if it breaks my poor natural human heart.”

“They’re going to wonder, of course, if we drop them suddenly,” mused Robert. “That doesn’t seem right either, at least without explanation. And of course there’s tonight. That’s all arranged for. We’d have to carry that through.”