Silver Wings (14 page)

The old lady put out a frail, gloveless finger and just touched the silk of Diana’s Paris frock lightly.

Diana stared at her and said stiffly, “Oh! Really! How amusing!”

“You’ll be the minister’s young lady, I’m thinking!” added the little old lady. She looked at her wistfully and left. Diana stared after her for an instant and then, turning back toward the pulpit, she saw to her vexation that John Dunleith and Neddy had utterly disappeared from the church!

How could they have gotten out?

There was a small narrow door at one end of the loft where the choir sat. They must have gone through that!

She gave a quick glance about the almost deserted church again and hurried out. She would at least get a little ahead of them and then walk slowly so that they would have to overtake her. That would really be more interesting anyway, to show that she had not waited for them.

But the two she sought were not anywhere in sight, and the little door that seemed to open out of the choir loft at the left of the chapel was closed tight.

She hurried on a few steps, looking ahead and behind, and when she had gone a little farther, she saw the man and the boy taking great strides across a field to her right in the direction of the woods. They would skirt the village and come by a roundabout way to the house without ever coming near her! They had outmaneuvered her again! And all that taunting crowd of guests would be out on the terrace when she reached the house, ready to laugh at her again. Diana Dorne coming back from anywhere unescorted. She set her lips! That must not be!

Swiftly she walked now, getting over the road in quick time till she came to the entrance of the country club, where after a hasty survey of the landscape, she turned in. Yes, there were some couples from the Whitney house still playing tennis. That was Susanne’s cherry silk blouse. And off at the ninth hole was a girl in an orange and black sweater. That would be Caroline, and the two men with her would be Freddy and Clarence. She drew a breath of relief, remembering that she had told them she would come over perhaps when she finished her letters. There was no one around to say whether she had been at church or not. The day was saved!

Half an hour later she came sauntering back to the terrace where the rest of the guests were beginning to assemble. She was attended by three admiring young men, Freddy and Clarence and Barry Blaine, who had arrived that morning, presumably the substitute for the flier nephew who had disappeared.

Amory was watching from her window. She had heard them call the newcomer Barry. He was thin and dark and rather wicked looking, she thought, as she studied him from behind her curtain.

The talk was excited, all about “Teddy.” Someone had bought a Sunday paper and seen the announcement of the proposed flight.

“I think it was mean of him to go off like that without giving us the slightest hint of what he was going to do. Think of it! To be related to a real thrill like that and not be allowed the slightest particle of glory! We might have given him a farewell dance at the country club!”

“I certainly am worried about him!” said Mrs. Whitney, coming out with the paper in her hand and gazing sorrowfully at the picture of Gareth’s best grin, taken standing by his plane. “It certainly is foolhardy of him to take another trip like that! Think of the anxiety of waiting to hear! I got a great many gray hairs the last trip he took. I can’t see why he isn’t satisfied with the laurels he has already won, without undertaking such an uninteresting trip as this. Who wants to go to Siberia by way of Alaska anyway? It’s ridiculous. And such terribly cold places, too. He’ll be liable to get pneumonia! At least he could have postponed it, when I told him how much I wanted him for this party!”

“Oh, poppycock!” said Mr. Whitney, coming out behind her. “Ted will come through all right. He always does, doesn’t he? And if Ted likes that kind of thing, why, that’s the kind of thing he likes! Why worry? It’s his life, not yours!”

“Well, I do worry!” persisted Mrs. Whitney. “I am the nearest to a mother he has left on earth. I mean to telegraph him not to go! I certainly shall! I’ll tell him it’s inexcusable to leave me this way when I was depending on him!”

“But Barry is here, Mama, you forget!” Caroline said, laughing. “You’ll have to think of some other reason.”

“Oh, but I’m sending for Mary Lou Westervelt, and that will make even couples again. I certainly shall assert my authority and tell him he must give up this foolhardy flight. He has done enough for the world, and he owes his family a little now.”

“Fat chance you’ll have stopping that bird!” said her husband, puffing away at a long black cigar. “You ought to have begun to exercise your ‘authority,’ as you call it, about fifteen years ago.”

Amory’s presence had been requested for the midday meal, and she was wishing she need not go down. She felt utterly out of harmony with the spirit of the other people. Not that it mattered much, for of course she would talk to nobody except the minister, who would likely be seated next to her again. But there was so little they could talk about in a crowd like that. For instance, she would like to ask him some questions about his morning sermon, but they would scarcely fit where all the worldly banter was flying about. It would be like exposing sacred things to profane eyes. Perhaps there would be a chance for her to ask her questions sometime later in the day when others were not about. She really had been deeply stirred by the sermon. She wondered what authority he had for some of the things he had said, or if they were fancies of his own that had no real foundation. He looked like a man who knew what he was talking about, and who would not say a thing unless he was sure it was true.

She hovered near the window until there came the call to dinner, and not till then did she see John Dunleith and Neddy approaching slowly through the garden, as if they had come from the woods. She knew Diana saw them, too, though she was apparently deeply absorbed in a conversation with the new young man, who looked at her with devouring eyes.

Dinner was even more unpleasant than she had feared. John Dunleith was indeed by her side, but he got almost no opportunity to speak to her during the entire meal, for strangely enough, the girl Susanne was sitting on his other side, and she chose, whether intentionally or from whim, to talk to him every minute. Her subject was the morning golf match between two noted golf players. She began by addressing John by name and asking him if he had seen it. And when he answered with a quiet negative, she went on to describe every play in detail, in the most extravagant terms, giving her opinion of each player’s ability. It was practically a recital, for the grave and preoccupied young man had no opportunity to say anything but yes and no, although his abstracted air was little encouragement to her chatter.

Amory began to wonder, and finally to be convinced, if there was some concerted action among the young people, for she noticed that Diana turned an annoyed look at Susanne occasionally in the intervals of her talk with Barry and that the others cast occasional knowing glances toward Susanne and her new protégé. Later she overheard Susanne explaining to Barry on the terrace, before the others came out, that they were all combining to give Diana a rest from the burden she had undertaken, and Barry looked across the garden to where John Dunleith stood talking to Neddy, and glared. But when Susanne asked him if he would join the group effort and help, he said snappily, “You bet I will!”

“But don’t tell Diana,” laughed Susanne. “She never likes to be helped, you know.”

“What do you take me for?” answered the young man with a sneer, and he walked away to find Diana.

B
ut it happened that he went in the wrong direction, for Diana was strolling behind the garden hedge on the edge of the airstrip, quite out of sight, apparently hunting for a lost string of beads that might happen to be there as well as anywhere else, and listening through the hedge to the conversation between Neddy and the minister.

“No, son, we don’t go fishing on the Lord’s day,” the young man was saying pleasantly, “but how about strolling down to the woods and having a story out of my Book? There’s some grand stuff in that Book, son, and I have a hunch you’ll like it.”

“Aw right!” agreed Neddy in a somewhat disappointed tone. Yet anything with Cousin John was interesting, he had found.

So they strolled through the garden gate and out on the airstrip, and there was Diana right on the job, looking up at exactly the right minute with a surprised expression, followed by one of relief and eagerness.

“Oh, heck!” said Neddy, pausing sullenly. “Can you beat it? Now she’ll tag along again. I’m gonta beat it!”

But John Dunleith took the lad’s arm in a firm grip. “Stay right where you are, pard. This is your afternoon!” he said in a low tone and took his steady way as if to pass the girl.

“Oh, Mr. Dunleith,” said Diana eagerly, “I’ve been so anxious to speak to you.”

John Dunleith paused, half turning back toward her, his grip on Neddy’s arm still firm. He lifted his eyebrows pleasantly and said, “Yes?” with a question mark but with no invitation in his eyes for her to walk with them.

“I wanted to ask you about what you said this morning. I don’t know that I fully understood all that you said.”

“About what point, Miss Dorne?” He spoke crisply, as though he had only a moment to stay, and pushing back his coat sleeve, consulted his wristwatch unobtrusively.

Diana had not expected to be brought so suddenly to the point, and she hesitated embarrassedly.

“Why—I— You said— That is—” she began and then looking up at him sweetly propounded a question: “Is it really true that you think the end of the world is coming very soon?” she asked plaintively. “Was that what you meant?”

“Was that what you got out of my talk this morning?” he asked, looking her gravely in the eyes.

“No, I—didn’t know. They said that you—” began Diana in confusion.

“Oh! I see!” said the young man reflectively.

“I thought perhaps you would make it a little plainer,” said Diana, trying to speak brightly.

He looked down at her quizzically, almost sadly.

“If I thought you really wanted to know,” he said, “of course I could. I wasn’t talking about the end of the world, though. That is an entirely different matter. That will be a very terrible time. I was speaking this morning of the return of the Lord Jesus, which will be a glad day for all His own.”

“Oh, do you mean something like—Christmas?” she hesitated prettily with her handsome brows puckered as if trying to understand.

He wondered if it were possible that she was as ignorant as she seemed, and he gave her an inscrutable look. But he answered her patiently. “No, nothing like that. Have you a Bible?”

“Why, I did have one. We were obliged to have one at school, you know.”

“I see. Well, I would advise you to read up about this if you are interested. I could give you a list of passages to look up.”

“Oh, would you? That would be so kind!” exclaimed Diana in her sweetest tone. She had her back turned to the garden gate. She did not see Barry standing there glaring over it at her, nor hear Susanna giggling beside him. She gurgled on in her character of naivete: white dress; white shoes; gold hair; earnest, seeking blue eyes raised to the young preacher’s face—a face that was strangely unmoved by the picture. “I’d be so much obliged for your help. But I’ve always had a lot of difficulty in understanding the Bible. Don’t you think it is rather deep, Mr. Dunleith? Don’t you think, really, that it might have been written in simpler language? I mean for ordinary persons like myself? The language sounds so stilted and unnatural. Don’t you think so?”

“The Bible says about itself that the way of salvation is made so plain that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein,” answered the preacher, with that same quizzical smile that he had used before. It maddened her, but she kept her poise.

“Oh, dear me! Well, it really must have been my fault then, I suppose. I was a very giddy girl, I’m afraid, when I was in school, and of course I haven’t read it much since. But I can come and ask you if I find anything that I do not understand? I am sure from having heard you this morning that you know a great deal about it. You preached so beautifully. I enjoyed it so much.”

He gave her another of those quick looks that almost seemed like a mingling of merriment and sadness, and she noticed that he did not thank her, but ignored her praise as if she had not spoken the words. He really was a strange young man. She could not reach him in the least through his own pride.

“I will give you some books that will help you, if you are really in earnest,” he went on. “If you want to understand the whole story, you need to begin by knowing when sin began and what salvation means. Suppose you begin by reading the sixth chapter of Romans.”

“Oh, really!” said Diana. “That sounds so interesting. I am eager to begin. You are so kind—”

“I’ll see that you get the right books,” said the young man, looking at his watch with an almost imperceptible movement of his eyes. “And now, if you will excuse me, Ned and I have an engagement, and we are overdue already, I believe, so we will have to leave you.”

As gracefully as any man she knew, he bowed and walked swiftly away, with the boy straight and proud by his side.

“Great work, pard!” said Neddy under his breath. “But what I wantta know, pard, is why do you monkey with her at all? She’s a tough egg, she is. Why, pard, she can drink more cocktails than all the other girls put together, and smoke more cigarettes, and she has all the fellas on her string an’ keeps each thinkin’ he’s the only One. I don’t see why you monkey with her at all. She’s just tryin’ to string you!”

John Dunleith walked along soberly for a moment without speaking. Neddy looked up, almost thinking he had not heard. Then the man looked down at the boy with a smile. “But she is a living soul, kid, and my Master cared enough to die for her. There is always a chance that the Bible will reach and do its work.”

“Don’t kid yourself!” said the worldly-wise Neddy.