Authors: Grace Livingston Hill
Blue Ruin
© 2012 by Grace Livingston Hill
Print ISBN 978-1-61626-649-3
eBook Editions:
Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-60260-3301
Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-60742-0514
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All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Cover design: Faceout Studio,
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Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683,
www.barbourbooks.com
Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses
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Printed in the United States of America.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
1920s New England
L
ynette went singing around the kitchen like a happy bird let loose, spreading delicate slices of bread, folding them together with mysterious delectable concoctions, cutting them in hearts and stars and diamonds, wrapping them in waxed paper, each fold creased down with firm fingers, gladly, as if the task were joy.
In the dining room her mother crumbed the breakfast table and set the extra dishes away in the rare old ancestral cupboard. She smiled tenderly and sighed in the same breath. How happy Lynnie was! The dear child! Life’s morning, and the world before her! Would the realization satisfy her anticipations?
This was Lynette’s first day at home after practically four years away at college. Oh, of course there had been vacations, blessed, blissful respites from the terror of the long, long loneliness without her. But now she was at home, really at home, come to stay. She asserted it with a glad ring to her voice and a light in her eyes that met an answering light from her mother’s eyes whenever she said it. Yet the mother knew in her heart of hearts that she had not really come to stay. This was only another vacation, possibly a few days or weeks longer than the others had been, but really after all just a time to get ready to go forever out of the brightness of her girlhood into the goal of every maiden’s life—a home of her own. Out of childhood forever, into a woman’s life.
The mother’s lips trembled at the thought, even while she smiled. How was she going to stand it when it really came? She had not ever definitely faced the thought even yet, though there had been no lack of reminders in the way of eager admirers among the young men and boys of her daughter’s acquaintance, ever since Lynette’s primary days.
But Lynette had eyes for only one.
The mother’s troubled glance went out of the window, down the sunny road toward a large white house set back from the street, with nasturtiums bordering the path to the gate. A young man came out of the door at that moment and went down the path and out the gate. He was coming with steps that were as glad as Lynette’s voice.
Was Dana Whipple the right mate for Lynette, her pearl of a girl, heart of gold, spirit of fire and dew?
The trouble grew in the mother’s eyes as she watched the young man swing joyously along toward her door, a fine specimen of manhood, noticeable even at a distance for his grace of carriage and his supple symmetrical form. As he entered the gate he took off his hat and lifted his head with a toss as if he enjoyed the play of the breeze with his heavy, waving crest of dark hair; his well-chiseled features; his great, dark eyes under straight, fine brows; the facile lips that could so lightly curve into a smile and show the perfect white teeth that helped to make his expression so vivid. Yes, there was no fault to find with his appearance. “Perfectly stunning!” one of Lynette’s college friends had called him last summer when she met him.
Looking at him now, as she had never looked before, with the light of sudden premonition in her heart, Lynette’s mother was forced to admit that he was a young man of great charm. Nor was his charm all of personal appearance. He had a mind of unusual vigor. He had taken high rank in college and come off with more honors than she knew how to name, and in seminary was considered the most promising member of his class. It was generally understood that he was in line for a pretty good thing in his chosen profession as a minister of the Gospel. Indeed he was spoken of everywhere as being something most rare and unusual in these days when so few were choosing to devote their lives to things religious.
But of course, Lynette’s mother told herself as she watched the oncoming young man, Dana had a reputation to maintain. There was something in the fact that he was named for a grandfather who had been famous as a preacher and orator in his denomination. It was expected of Dana that he would carry on the tradition of the family which went with the name. One must remember that in trying to make a fair estimate of his character. Then as quickly as the thought had come, Lynette’s mother rebuked her own soul.
Nevertheless, as she stood there while he came briskly up the walk to the door, she felt that something she had been evading and trying to forget for years, some sudden possibility of peril or grave mistake was approaching swiftly. Somehow she felt that this day was a crisis, a kind of turning point. Today Dana and Lynette would probably settle their future irrevocably. All through the years they had drifted and played, carefree and joyous, taking their friendship as a matter of course, the future all roseate with possibilities, content to go through the college days with zest and earnestness. But now at last it was over, and the inevitable time had come when this friendship between the boy and girl must have its reckoning, its final consummation, and the mother’s heart contracted with sudden fear and anxiety over the thought. Had she been wrong to let these two be so close during the years, encouraging their friendship because it seemed so safe a thing for her girl? It seemed that all was as it should be. But
was
it?
Was
Dana Whipple the kind of man who could make her daughter happy? Had she perhaps laid overzealous hands upon God’s sacred plans for the lives of these two and thought to help them on to please herself?
That the boy and girl had something more than friendship in their eagerness this morning she could not doubt. Her fearful heart caught the knowledge of it in the lilt of Lynette’s voice, in the joyous call of the boy upon the doorstep now. She ought to be glad at this joy that was coming to them today, Lynette’s birthday, her first day at home after the college years—yes, she ought to be glad, but there was a sudden sinking of her heart, a fearful realization that what she had done was done, and she could not face the boy, not yet.
She made a stealthy retreat toward the stairs and vanished as Dana opened the door. From the upper hall she opened the back stair door and called down softly.
“He’s come, Lynnie. You go to the door. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Where are you all?” Dana called in his glad, boyish voice that yet had taken on a new manly tone of command. “Lynn! Oh, I say! Aren’t you ready yet? I expected to see you waiting for me out on the porch. I’m late. I had to send a telegram for mother after I was ready to start.”
There was an instant of utter silence while the mother’s heart stood still and seemed to count a million. Then Lynette’s cheerful girl voice, just as always only for that lilt of joy, rang out a saucy welcome, and the mother drew a breath. She closed her eyes for an instant with a hurried prayer, “O Father, take care of my little girl!” and hastened down. The note of naturalness had been such a relief! After all, things were just as they always had been—yet! She wanted to hold the moment and go down and talk to them—just as they always had been—once more, at least.
“There you are, Mother Brooke,” called Dana cheerfully as she appeared. “I almost thought you weren’t glad to see me you were so long in coming. Isn’t it great for us both to be back again? I declare it doesn’t seem real, we’ve waited for it so long!”
The mother drew a deep breath, and life moved on again as it had been going for years. After all, who could be like Dana? Reassurance surrounded him and permeated the air. Her doubts vanished. How handsome he was standing there with his soft panama hat in his hand and the light of the morning on the crest of his dark hair, his eyes flashing joyous welcome, his whole attitude like a nice big boy out for a lark. She beamed upon him as of old. Who could help it? Everybody loved Dana, and he seemed really to care for her welcome. He was an unusual fellow to be interested in an old woman, even though she was the mother of the girl he loved. Young men nowadays didn’t stop to pay much attention to their elders.
Putting aside her misgivings, Mrs. Brooke hurried out to the kitchen to help her daughter put the final touch to the glorified lunch basket that was prepared for the day’s feast. After all, if one must give up a daughter it was less like giving up to hand her over to a son who loved you. And it would be easy to love Dana. She could just let her natural feelings go and Dana would be like her own boy. She realized that she had never quite done this in the past, for always there had been this dim shadowy possibility ahead of her, that perhaps Dana would not be the right one. Some passing expression, something lax about the handsome lips now and then, a shade of weakness from some thrice-removed ancestor possibly—what was it made her feel so? She could not tell. Only a mother’s natural dread perhaps of the man who should finally call her one daughter his own.