Girl to Come Home To (12 page)

Louella shut her thin lips tight and pursed them while she shook her head, disapprovingly. “Now Margaret Graeme, you know perfectly well that you had no right to take that attitude. You should have insisted on making Rod tell you
every
thing. After all, that is the way to encourage deception. And you have just deliberately encouraged Rodney in deceiving you. I certainly am glad I came in that night and brought the matter out in the open, even if Rodney didn’t like it. And furthermore, I’ll do all I can whenever I see him, in trying to make him see that the way he has treated and is treating that lovely girl is all wrong, utterly unmanly, just the part of a scoundrel!”

Mother Graeme gathered up her knitting and tucked it into her knitting bag and then looked at her visitor more indignantly than Louella had ever seen that placid cousin-in-law look.

“Louella,” she said, and her voice was firm and angry, “what in the world do you mean? What an outrageous thing for you to say! You certainly will have to explain those remarks, or we cannot talk together anymore. I will not have my son maligned.”

“Oh, yes, your poor little son!” taunted Louella. “Yes, of course you would defend the poor child. After all, if he has been able to fight in a grown-up war, I should think he could do his own defending.”

“Now look here, Louella, I’m not trying to defend my son, because there is nothing to defend. I am trying to find out what you meant by saying that he has, and is, treating his former fiancée outrageously. What right have you to say that? Who has been talking to you? Where did you get any reason to speak like that?”

“Why, I got my information from the lady herself. She told me herself when she came into the dining room the other night Rodney took his dishes and dinner and marched out of the room without speaking to her, and that he did not return while she was there. She said you told her that he wasn’t there. At least Jerry did, and that she couldn’t find out anything about him from any of you. And she said she knew he must be there for his coat and cap had been hanging in the hall when she came through. Besides, he was there at the table eating pie when I came in.”

“I see,” said Mother Graeme. “So you have turned detective. Just why are you doing that, Louella? Is it merely out of curiosity? I didn’t know that you were especially curious.” Mother Graeme was growing quieter, more self-controlled.

Louella brindled indignantly.

“Really!” she huffed. “Since when did you take up this offensive way of talking? I certainly wouldn’t know you, Margaret! But then I have heard that even a dog who is very gentle will snarl and bite when her offspring is attacked.”

Margaret Graeme arose quietly, laid down her knitting bag on the little table by her chair. “That will be about all, Louella. Excuse me. I’ll get us a cup of tea. Perhaps you will be less excited after that.”

“Excited!
I
, excited! I should say it was you who is excited.”

But Mother Graeme had gone out and closed the door definitely. She had not heard what the annoying guest had said.

When Mrs. Graeme returned she was carrying a tray. Two steaming cups of tea, lemon and cream and sugar, a plate of cookies and another of tiny sandwiches. Mother Graeme had a theory that she often put into practice. “When in trouble always feed the troublemaker.” She was working her theory now. She put the tray down on the little table, removed her knitting bag, and drew up a chair for the cousin.

“Now,” she said cheerily, “let’s have a good time and stop arguing.”

“But I wasn’t arguing,” said Louella belligerently. “I was just
telling
you.”

“Lemon or cream? I can’t ever remember which you take, Louella.”

“Lemon!” snapped Louella. “I can’t imagine how anybody can take cream. That’s why so many people have to reduce, they take too much cream. And lemon is so much smarter.”

“Here are napkins, Louella.”

Louella accepted a napkin and thereby lost her line of argument.

“Help yourself to sandwiches, Louella.”

“Are those cookies made by your mother’s recipe?” asked the guest, her mouth filled with delectable sandwiches. But Louella never praised anything if she could help it.

“No,” said Margaret Graeme. “I don’t think they are made by mother’s recipe. I had loaned out my recipe book. I think this was a recipe Kathie got over the radio the other day. Have a cookie and sample it.”

“Thanks!” said Louella and took a generous bite. “Yes, this seems very light and tasty. I always thought your mother’s recipe didn’t have enough shortening in it. This seems better. Light as a feather. I wish you’d give me half a dozen of these to serve with five o’clock tea when someone comes in to call.”

“Why surely,” said Margaret Graeme pleasantly, wondering how long this unwelcome guest was planning to stay and what subject she could start next that would be argument proof. But the guest did not wait for a subject. She had one right up her sleeve, the real reason for her coming.

“By the way, what are the boys going to do now? They don’t have to go back overseas again, do they?”

“They haven’t received their orders yet,” said the mother.

“Do you mean they don’t know? But I understood they knew before they left the hospital. I heard they had a good job provided for them and they were done fighting.”

“Oh,” said the mother, “just where did you hear that, Louella? It’s strange they wouldn’t let us know, if the matter is decided yet.”

“Do you really mean that you
don’t
know yet, or are you just trying to put me off again? Because, really, I don’t think that’s very kind of you, Margaret, to keep me in ignorance when practically everybody else knows and is talking about it.”

“The next time they tell you that, Louella, suppose you ask them where
they
got their information. Because there really has been no word come yet for the boys. In fact, they didn’t expect it for a month yet. They were sent home for a good rest, and they will not be told the decision about their future work until they go down to Washington and have a thorough physical examination to see how they have progressed since they left the hospital on the other side.”

“Oh, how perfectly silly! Those boys are in fine physical shape, don’t you think, Margaret? Their mother certainly ought to be the best judge.”

“I don’t think I’d be the best judge, under the circumstances. You know I wouldn’t understand all that they’ve been through and what reactions I should look for. It’s the navy’s responsibility you know, not mine. And whether I thought so or not wouldn’t make any difference to them. The boys belong to the navy, and they have to do as the navy says.”

“But I thought they were out for good. Mrs. Hopkins says her boys are home definitely to stay. And she says they were practically in the same company with your boys. She says her boys said they heard overseas that your boys were slated definitely for something else. Something over here, they said.”

Margaret Graeme looked at the cousin thoughtfully. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know,” she said quietly.

“Oh, now Margaret, don’t be so closemouthed. You know perfectly well you just don’t want to give out information.”

“I’m sorry, Louella, I’ve told you the truth. But if you don’t choose to believe me I’ve nothing further to say. Won’t you have another cup of tea? Another cookie?”

“No, Margaret, I’ve had plenty. And besides, I feel very much hurt at the way you are treating me. I know perfectly well you’re not telling me all you know. I feel very much offended at your attitude.”

“I am sorry, Louella, that you take it this way. I have no intention of refusing to give you any facts that I have a right to give, even though I feel that your attitude of demanding to know everything about the family is unjustifiable. However, in this case I do not know what the boys are going to be ordered to do and shall probably not know for several weeks. And by the way, here are the cookies you asked for. Take the sandwiches, too, if you like. Good-bye.”

Louella accepted the neat package done up in paper napkins and took herself out of the picture.

Margaret Graeme turned thankfully away from the door, grateful that this trying relative was gone before her family got home.

On her way back to the hotel, Louella remembered that she had neglected to ask whether the whole family were going out Sunday night to hear Jeremy speak. Well, never mind. She would insist that Jessica carry out the plan of sitting in the gallery. She felt reasonably sure this plan could only succeed.

B
ut Rodney did not sit in the gallery, as Louella had been sure he would do, confirmed in this belief by Margaret Graeme’s statement that the boys did not care to be in the public eye and be lauded for what they had been in combat. And so Jessica sulked in a dark corner of the gallery without a gallant to comfort her lonely state.

She had not taken any of the girls with her because she felt her part in the drama she was expecting to play would be more effective if she went alone and slid unawares, as it were, into the vacant seat beside her former beau. But just before the meeting began, the other girls of her “gang,” as she called it, came into the church and, finding no seats downstairs, went grumbling up the stairs to find her. They could not understand why she had put them off and refused to go with them. And so when they had found her, they squeezed into a seat across the aisle from where she was sitting, in behind a post where they could scarcely see the platform, and sat staring around them.

“Say, are you sure Jerry is going to speak here tonight?” whispered Emma Galt to Alida Hopkins. “He isn’t down there on the platform, and there are quite a lot of people sitting up there behind the pulpit.”

“Yes, Jerry is speaking all right. I saw his name on the church bulletin board outside the church as we came in. Didn’t you?”

“Sure!” said Isabelle. “Wait! Some more are coming. There! There he is! The last one. And see. Down there, coming in the middle aisle. That’s Rodney Graeme, isn’t it? And who are those girls with them? As I live, isn’t one of them that Beryl Sanderson? It surely is! And who is the other one, oh boy! Gaze on that outfit. I’ll bet she’s some swell friend from New York. Girls, we made a big mistake. We should have come early and sat down in that front row of seats.”

“You couldn’t,” said Alida. “There’s a rope across the aisle. Those seats are reserved. Look! They’re opening the aisle. They’re escorting those people into those reserved seats. Why, look! Isabelle! Isn’t that Rodney Graeme with them? And who
are
the girls? Beryl Sanderson and who else? I never saw her before. I
wonder
who she is.”

Isabelle leaned forward and looked, whipped out her little old-fashioned opera glasses, which she had lately inherited from an old aunt, and stared at the group being seated.

“Yes, that’s Rodney and Beryl all right. And wait. I know who that other girl is. She
is
from New York. She’s been here before to visit Beryl. Her name is Diana Winters. Well, that’s some setup. Just how do you suppose Rod got in with them? For the love of Mike, won’t Jess be angry? This is what she gets for following the drivel of that poor old gawk of a cousin of the Graemes. That’s what I told her when she insisted on going to that poky old hotel to call on her. I think that woman’s a flop, and everything she tries to do is silly.”

“Oh, keep still, Isabelle. That old man is looking at us. He wants us to stop talking.”

“Well, this church doesn’t belong to him. I shall talk if I like, and he can’t stop me. There! There! See they’ve given those reserved seats to the Graemes. Say, I think this is a rank trick the old girl played on us, bringing us to a church to sit away up in the gallery where we can’t possibly see anything or hear anything. Let’s go downstairs and get a better seat.”

“There aren’t any seats, Isabelle,” said Emma Galt, leaning over Alida to speak to her. “I stood up and looked, and I just now heard that usher who passed down the other aisle at the end tell that old man that there wasn’t even standing room left down there. We better sit still. At least Jerry has a good strong voice, and I’m sure we can hear him.”

“Not unless you girls can stop your talking,” said the old man, leaning forward and looking at them sharply.

That made Isabelle angry, and she was about to tell the old man what she thought of him, but suddenly the organ rolled into attention and fairly thundered, and not even Isabelle could be heard over that. Then all at once everybody began to sing:

It was an old song, and most people in the audience knew the words. They had sung it in the primary class long ago, and it was still familiar in their different churches. But it was wonderful how the audience took hold of it and swung it along, setting a keynote for the meeting that was to follow.

The little crowd of indifferent ones in the gallery whose whole plan for the evening had gone far astray looked only bored. They did not care for this style of music. It seemed to them childish, belonging to an earlier age when men prated of sin and salvation, and Jessica sat back with a sigh of disgust. Jessica had distinctly not come here to listen to religious songs, even if they were so well sung that they filled the air to the exclusion of other thoughts. What did they have to sing such songs for?

But with scarcely a word from the platform the throng drifted into another:

Jessica, with another audible sigh, looked toward her gang across the aisle and curled her lip. She was all but ready to go out of this silly, childish gathering. What did she come here for anyway, to listen to a young boy who just a few days ago was nothing but a high school student declaiming? How much more of this did she have to sit through? If it wasn’t for these obnoxious people who had crowded in beside her and shoved her even against her protest all the way to the inside end of the seat, making it impossible for her to leave without climbing over them, she would leave at once.