Beauty for Ashes (9 page)

“Oh, has Murray MacRae come over? I hoped he would. Why, surely, go. He’s a wonderful fellow. I’ve been hoping his sister would get home while you are here. She’s been away all winter teaching. Yes, go by all means. You need exercise and somebody to get you out. I’ve been worrying about you. I’ll come out and introduce you. But Murray’s all right. He’s wonderful. He’s been off all winter, too.”

So Gloria changed her shoes and felt a pleasant little thrill of excitement at the thought of playing tennis again. At least she wouldn’t have to think of Stan’s dead face all the time while she was playing.

Emily was out talking to the young man when she came down in a pretty little green frock she often wore to play tennis.

After the introduction, they swung away together down the path and across the road.

It seemed good to Gloria to be out again with someone young, to be going off to play, as if she were still carefree and happy. It was almost like being put back two or three years into her girlhood and not having to think of problems and sorrows and tragedies.

“That’s a peach of a book you were reading,” the young man said as they crossed the road and swung into his gate. “This isn’t the first time you’ve read it of course.”

“Why, yes, it is,” said Gloria. “I never came on it anywhere. Do you know it?”

“Yes, it’s one of my old favorites. I read it several times when I was a kid, and I like to go over it again now and then. There’s some fine writing in it, besides being a rare story, and so utterly human and thrilling.”

She looked at him surprised. The young men she knew did not discuss books in such a way, especially such books. In fact, most of them read very few books and seldom spoke of them. Her friends were a hilarious crowd, always on the move, going somewhere, doing things. There was never any time to read or to discuss. They would have been bored to discuss a serious book.

“It’s thrilling”—Gloria hesitated for words—“but it’s so sad. Why do lovely things have to end badly? All life is not that way, is it?”

She was asking the question almost wistfully, hoping he would say it was not.

“Why, yes, I’m afraid life is that way, a lot of sadness mixed with the sweet. Haven’t you found it that way? People do die, and sickness and sorrow and trouble do come sooner or later. Isn’t that the way it seems to you?”

“Not until—recently,” she answered evasively. “I hoped you would say it wasn’t usual. Terrible things do happen once in a great while, but—I can’t bear to think they come often.”

“Oh, but they do,” he said gently. “You can’t go among people, especially today, and not find tragedy everywhere, all mixed up with the happiness.”

“But that’s terrible!” said Gloria pitifully. “I never thought until a very short time ago that dreadful things could come to just anybody anytime.”

“Didn’t you?” He turned and looked at her tenderly, as if she were a little child in her first disillusionment. “I learned that when I was just a kid. A very precious older brother died.”

“Yes, death,” said Gloria. “Of course, but I don’t see why it had to be! It would have been so much nicer if the world was made so that nice things went on always and there didn’t have to be pain and sorrow and death.”

He gave her another quick astonished look and then after a minute spoke again. “It will be that way someday, of course, when the curse is taken away.”

The amazement in her eyes showed that she did not at all understand what he meant.

“In the new earth,” he explained, “ ‘God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’ ”

He spoke so earnestly, with such conviction, as if he had authority to give out the words as truth, that suddenly the possibility of such conditions seemed real to Gloria and an unutterable longing welled up in her heart to enter into them. She did not know that in spite of her efforts to hide her deep feeling a heartbreaking yearning showed in her face and voice as she quoted in an attempt at lightness: “ ‘Eventually? Why not now?’ ”

With rare tact, the young man responded to her pretense at gaiety: “ ‘There’s much to be done ere it comes to that.’ ”

“Oh!” The hope seemed to melt out of Gloria’s face. “You mean after centuries and centuries, people will get better and better and conditions will change? What good does that do us?” She said it bitterly.

“No, thank God I don’t mean that. There is no hope in that. I mean something much better than that, much more certain, much nearer. Say, why not let me come over sometime and tell you about it?”

Gloria brought her gaze from the neat sunny court framed in brilliant green and gave a long, impersonal, searching look to the stranger who had so astonishingly given her a glimpse into another world. Was it worthwhile to follow what was probably just a will-o’-the-wisp and idealist’s fancy? But something she saw in the steady, calm eyes, something of assurance and of joyous certainty, brought again that throb of hope and yearning to her sad heart.

“I’d be very glad to hear it,” she said. “It sounds like a fairy tale.”

“But that’s the beauty of it; it isn’t a fairy tale. It’s true.” He gave her a rare smile, and she wondered at the light in his eyes. Was this one of those people you called a dreamer? He didn’t look fanatical. She had never seen a young man with a look like that in his face.

But just then the side door was opened by a pleasant-faced woman with gray hair. She carried a plate of something in her hand, and she had a smile like the young man.

“Here are some cookies just out of the oven, Murray. I thought you might like to nibble at them while you are playing.”

“That’s great!” said the young man. “And, Mother, let me introduce Miss Sutherland. She’s been good enough to take pity on me.”

The mother gave a quick, keen glance at the beautiful girl and looked apprehensively at her boy, but she gave Gloria a warm welcome, and Gloria liked her at once. It amazed her how friendly and homelike these country people were. She felt at home with them at once.

The cookies were delicious, and the two young people began their tennis without any feeling that they were strangers.

They were both good players, and Gloria, who had in her possession at home a row of silver cups that she had taken in various club tournaments, found that she had an opponent who called forth all her skill and energy. Therefore it was no tame, amateurish game but a close, quick, intensive one, employing not only muscles but brains. Gloria’s cheeks began to glow and her gold curls were in lovely confusion. The mother, watching occasionally from her kitchen window, admired even while she feared for her cherished son. He couldn’t help but admire this beautiful girl! And she was no girl for him to become interested in. She was the daughter of a multimillionaire! She was accustomed to every luxury that money could buy! She was the spoiled idol of society! And what she was doing up here buried in the country the mother could not understand. She knew enough of the Sutherland family to be sure that this girl was out of her environment, and there must be some unusual reason for it.

She looked at her Murray, tall and straight and fine and, so far as she knew, at present unattached to any girl, and sighed. Did her boy have to go through the fires of falling in love hopelessly? Those two out there on the tennis court made a wonderful couple as they played together, fine and strong and well matched, but as utterly apart as concerned wealth, social position, and upbringing, as the poles. Why had she been so impulsive and lacking in foresight as to suggest to Murray that he ask the lonesome-looking girl on the porch over there to try out his newly finished court with him? If she had had a closer view of her beauty, she never would have done it.

They played until suppertime, and John Hastings came over to say that Emily had sent word there was potpie for supper and it must be eaten right away before it fell, so Gloria must come at once.

There was no opportunity for further talk. Gloria was sorry about that. She wanted to ask this strange young man just what he had meant by his talk about a Utopian earth. But she gladly promised to play again the next day and hurried away with John Hastings to discover what “potpie” might be. It was a dish unknown to the Sutherland cook at Roselands.

Gloria’s cheeks were glowing and her eyes were bright. There were no more dark circles under them, and she realized that she hadn’t thought of her own sorrows once all the afternoon. Suddenly, as she sat down at the table, it came to her that there was a long, empty evening ahead of her. She supposed she would have to hunt up another book to read.

But old Mrs. Weatherby surprisingly provided another entertainment. Of course she had no idea what an utterly strange thing she was asking this daughter of the world to do. It seemed to her a small thing and quite a natural thing to ask.

“I’ve been wondering, Gloria,” she said toward the close of the meal, “if you would mind going over to prayer meeting with me tonight. Emily and John have to go see one of the men that worked on the farm last summer. He’s been in an automobile accident. He’s in the hospital and may die, and he’s sent for them. I do hate to miss my prayer meeting, especially now when our minister’s away. Every one counts, you know, and it’s so discouraging to any leader to have only a handful.”

Gloria gasped inwardly. What might a prayer meeting be? Would it be something embarrassing? Would they perhaps expect her to pray? But of course she couldn’t refuse an old lady a request like that. So she smiled and said sweetly that she would love to go with her. And hadn’t they better go in the car—that would be so much easier for her? And so it was arranged.

Gloria had no idea what sort of outfit one was supposed to wear to prayer meeting, but she changed from the pretty little sports dress she was wearing into a white dress with a warm white coat and a white beret on her gold head. Old Mrs. Weatherby eyed her approvingly and went off proudly in the five-thousand-dollar car without an idea what a costly outfit was at her service for the evening.

They were early. There were only five people in the room when they arrived. Gloria had a passing wish that she could stay outside the church and watch the sunset, for it seemed stuffy inside the building and she shrank inexpressibly from the solemn stillness that pervaded the dimly lit prayer meeting room, where those five people sat with bowed heads. It filled her with an uncomfortable awe and made her think of Stan’s funeral and his white, handsome face with the selfish lips. Her bridegroom! The knife was in her soul, once more turning with a twisted wrench, and she wished she had not come.

She sat down in the wooden chair and bent her head respectfully, her eyes in her lap and her tragedy gripping her by the throat while old Mrs. Weatherby bowed her head in prayer. Here she was in the hands of her life horror again, and here she must remain for at least an hour, or probably more. An hour of horror! Oh, life, life! Why did one ever have to be born into a world like this full of trouble?

Then the big bell in the steeple began to toll, reverberating through the room and echoing outside and down the street. People came in by twos and threes. There seemed to be quite a lot of people coming in. Why did they come if they didn’t have to, Gloria wondered?

Then suddenly someone walked straight up the middle aisle past her, with quick, springy, purposeful steps, and as he passed her, she looked up and recognized the back of the young man she had been playing tennis with that afternoon. So he had come, too! Well, he would, perhaps, a man who had a hope in him that this old world was ever going to be rid of its curse. A dreamer, a hoper. A man like that might even be able to go into dreary places like prayer meeting rooms and feel them to be bearable. But somehow the room seemed to be more endurable to her since he entered.

And why was he going way up front? Why! He was even stepping up on the low platform and sitting down behind the table that was there. She watched him, startled. He had a soft Bible in his hand, and as he laid it on the table and sat down, he put his hand up to his eyes and was praying also. She watched him covertly, noted the fine outline of his head, the thick brown hair that waved away from his forehead, the strength and fineness of the hand that covered his eyes. And his head wasn’t bent in prayer as if it were a formality either. There was a reverence about him that showed he was in earnest.

So this then was the explanation! He was a preacher! What a pity to waste a young man like that! How well he played tennis, and there wasn’t a thing about him to suggest the smugness that she had always connected in her mind with the clergy. He was cheerful and bright and interesting. But he was different from any of the young men she knew. She recalled at the moment the question she had asked her father on their ride, and it came to her that here was a young man one could be sure of; he would not have been killed in a nightclub on the eve of his marriage, would not have been the object of a lover’s jealous shot!

Sadly she turned her eyes away and caught her breath with a sharp quick wish that Stan, her Stan, might have been a young man like this one, a young man in whom she could have trusted. A wistful yearning came into her heart that even if he had to die and leave her, he might have left her trusting in him, believing in his love. Even if she had had to go lonely all her days, it would have been something to remember, to hold as her own, to be glad in.

But the meeting began at once with a hymn, and the young man’s voice led off in a strong clear baritone, sweet and full of resonance. She recognized that it was an unusual voice. It was an old hymn that congregations are used to droning out very often, in the tone a dying swan might use, but it was new to Gloria and it was not droned. The vital young voice that led made sure of that.

“Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer
,

That calls me from a world of care
,

And bids me, at my Father’s throne
,

Make all my wants and wishes known!”

And he sang it as if the hour were sweet to him. He was not here merely because he had to lead this meeting, merely because his profession obliged him to come and go through certain forms and ceremonies. He was here because he wanted to be. He was here to worship, to meet a God who was in this church, this little old-fashioned country church with an ingrain carpet and a cabinet organ and hard wooden chairs. He looked as if he were glad to be here and was enjoying it.