Girl to Come Home To (27 page)

“Oh, I didn’t tell her much, only that she needn’t worry, we were not going far, not at present. That satisfied her for the time. You know, Mom has always been wonderfully understanding.”

“Yes, I know,” said Rodney. “She’s about the best soldier in our family. Dad always wants to understand everything.”

“Yes,” said Beryl’s father, “I’m like that, too. I run my family pretty well, and I sometimes think I could run the government, too, better than most other people. Well, couldn’t I, Mamma?”

Such a pleasant, understanding family they all were, and so much like the Graemes, thought Diana, wistfully wishing her own family were like them.

Then suddenly she looked up and her eyes met Rodney’s eyes, and there was something in them like a blessing. Her cheeks turned rosy, and somehow unexplained matters seemed all at once set right between them. Her heart grew gladly light, and she knew she was not going home to New York in the morning. Not
yet
, anyway.

After Jerry saw that look pass between them, he settled down to enjoy his third helping of mashed potatoes and gravy and spent the rest of the time looking at Beryl.

The afternoon came at last and Rodney could take a shy Diana out and have a talk with her.

“Well, Diana, are you off me for life since you found out about my foolish past?” he asked after they had found a pleasant grassy place to sit among the trees.

Diana’s eyes lighted happily.

“Everybody has a silly past,” she said wisely enough. “Perhaps it isn’t always their own fault entirely. It is sometimes the fault of older people who ought to know better. They fairly fling people at you and insist on making something of their companionship. That was my trouble. I was sort of paired off with a boy I had known all my life, and I couldn’t seem to get away from it. He just ordered me around as if I belonged to him, and he got around my mother, till I finally ran away to visit Beryl and get away from it all, so I could think out what to do.”

Rodney was watching her as she talked. “Then you hadn’t got your trousseau and wedding dress all ready when you came away? And you haven’t set the date for your wedding yet?” he asked, watching her meanwhile keenly.

“Mercy, no!” Diana said with a laugh. “I hadn’t any idea of getting married.” Then she turned to him suddenly and looked him sharply in the eyes. “Did
she
tell you that?”

He looked astonished. “Yes, Jessica told me. How did you know?”

“Because she threatened to tell you unless I went home to New York at once.”

“She
did
? The little rat!”

“And she threatened to go up to New York and find the young man she said she heard I was going to marry and tell him how I had been running around with all of you down here.”

There was a kind of a frightened smile on her face as she said this, and Rodney knew it was troubling her. “Do you mind her doing that?” he asked, a tender note in his voice.

“No, only it may get to my father and mother if they come home soon, and it will trouble them. They have been awfully worried because I wouldn’t come home and fix up an engagement right away.”

“And you don’t want that?”

“No, I certainly do
not
,” said Diana definitely.

Rodney looked at her earnestly another minute, and then he said firmly, “Well then, I guess we’ve got to do something about this right away. I wasn’t going to rush things because I felt perhaps you didn’t know me very well, and I was so uncertain about my future, but the immediate future is sort of settled for the present, anyway.” He reached out and took both her hands in his. “You
dear
!” he said tenderly. “I love you, my sweet!”

Then he bent down and kissed her softly, and Diana looked up with a glad light in her face like a glory light. Their lips came together again in a long, sweet kiss, as he drew her closer.

“I love you, too,” said she softly. “I think I’ve loved you ever since you prayed for me in the meeting that night when Jerry spoke.”

He drew her closer and looked down into her face. “Yes, I was praying for you then,” he said, wonderingly. “How did you know?”

“I just felt it in my heart,” she whispered softly. “It frightened me a little and made me feel a sinner. I never had known I was a sinner before, although I joined the church when I was a child. But how did you now I needed praying for?”

He smiled. “I guess the Holy Spirit told me. I kept wondering and wondering if you knew the Lord, and tried to say you wouldn’t have been in the meeting if you didn’t, yet I knew that was no proof, and so I began to pray that you should know my Lord.”

“Oh, my dear! This is wonderful! I never knew God could speak to people and guide them on this earth the way He is doing now. I am so glad I have found you. I didn’t think there would ever be a man I could love. That is why I ran away down here.”

“Then you didn’t love the man they thought you were going to marry?”

“No, I didn’t love him, and I didn’t want to marry him. He is nice, you know, a really good moral fellow, but I didn’t love him. Not even if he had been a Christian I wouldn’t want to marry him. I couldn’t
love
him.”

“That’s good,” said Rodney. “That makes it all right with me. And Jessica can go around telling all the tales she wants to tell. It won’t bother me any. But now, here’s something else. Your mother and father. What will they say?”

“Well, of course they won’t like it very much, not at first, anyway. At least Mother won’t. She’s very much sold on Bates Hibberd. And she doesn’t know you. But she will. I’m satisfied she will. She’ll like all those ribbons and decorations you’re wearing on your uniform, too. Those things count a lot with her. Of course you’re an officer, too, of some kind, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes, of a sort,” Rodney said, laughing. “But will this mean we will have to wait a long time to get married? How old are you anyway?”

“Twenty-one last April,” said Diana with a glad smile. “I’m of age. I can do as I please, although of course I don’t want to hurt my parents, but if they object I’ll have to do what I think is right, even in spite of them. And I know my father won’t object. He’ll like you, too, I’m sure.”

“But you said this other guy was rich, didn’t you? And I’m as poor as that typical church mouse. Of course I’ve got a job with the government just now, but the war is almost over. There is no telling what will come afterward for me. I might have to be just a plain farmer. That’s something I understand, at least.”

“That’s all right with me,” said Diana, happily nestling closer to the strong arm that held her.

“Yes, but it might not be all right with your dad, my dear. And perhaps it’s all right for him to feel that way, too. Parents don’t like to hand their children over to penniless strangers.”

“They won’t object after they know you. Anyway, I love you.”

“You dear!” he said, bending to touch her lips with his own again. “What a girl to come home to! And to think I was bitter when I returned because my girl had gone back on me, and I hated her for it. When all the time she wasn’t my real girl at all. She was the girl I
thought
would be a right one and then found out that God had something better waiting and ready for me. What a girl to come home to! My dearest, the best in all the world! But now, see here, we’ve got to do something about this matter of your mother and father at once. If Jessica goes up to New York as she threatened, and gets in touch with that Bates Hibberd, he’ll beat us to your parents, and that will not be so good. When do you say they are coming home?”

“Probably not till the end of the week,” said Diana.

“Then we better go Saturday morning. I can get off then, I think. This isn’t a thing that can wait. Do you think so?”

“Oh, yes, I’d like to get it over. I warn you it won’t be easy. Mother is very much set on Bates. She’ll probably call up when she gets home, and I dread that for she might insist on sending Bates down to accompany me home. That would just fit right in with her plans.”

“Then don’t say when you’re coming. Say you’ll try and arrange things here to get back soon. I believe perhaps we better just go ourselves early in the morning unannounced, and then there can’t be anything like that sprung on us. You see, I’ve had experience in this long-distance calling back and forth. There generally is some mix-up, especially when there is a difference of opinion. I’ll be ready to go on that early train if you are. Are you sure you can get away?”

“Yes, I can go. Perhaps that is the best way, just take things in our own hands and announce what we are going to do, and say we’ve come for their blessing.”

So they sat and made their lovely plans.

“Oh, it is going to be so wonderful to have somebody planning for me, somebody I can love and trust,” said Diana. “It was awful to be ordered around by Bates. Oh, he was nice and pleasant, you understand, but I constantly resented his possessive manner.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Rodney fervently. “But maybe you’ll find me developing a possessive manner, too. What will happen then?”

“Oh, but I
love
you! And that makes all the difference in the world.”

“Darling!” said Rodney, gathering her close again and sealing the word with a kiss.

“It’s odd, but Beryl said something like that to me the first day I came, and I didn’t know just exactly what she meant. You see, I didn’t know what love like this meant. I hadn’t known you yet.”

Time went very swiftly and happily out there under the sheltering trees, for those two. Occasionally they would pause in their gladness and make a plan or two about Saturday and then slip back again to merely exulting in the presence of each other.

“And it’s so wonderful that you belong to the Lord. You seemed to understand and take Him into your heart right away. That set the seal right at first on my love,” said Rodney thoughtfully. “I knew you were the right one by that very sign, for I had been knowing all the way home that I couldn’t ever love anyone who did not give allegiance to my Lord.”

“Oh,” said Diana with wonder in her eyes. “And I told Beryl that I was afraid of you after hearing that prayer. You were so religious I was just afraid to talk to you lest I couldn’t measure up to your heights. And just to think, you reached down to the level where I’d been living and lifted me up where I could see the light and glory in Jesus’ face. I would have loved Him long ago if I had really ever seen Him. And oh, I’m so glad it was you that helped me find Him.”

And out in another green place in the woods where there were no people, and only a sweet silence punctuated now and again by piercing sweet bird notes, Jeremy and Beryl were walking arm in arm, or sometimes hand in hand, according to the roughness of the going.

They had been talking about Jessica. In fact, it was almost impossible, after the scene that noon, not to talk about her. And Jerry had been telling Beryl of the early years when he was always anxious because that girl fairly possessed his brother and he couldn’t do anything about it.

“For he was always such a wonderful chap!” said Jeremy soberly. “I just couldn’t bear to see him get in her clutches. And then to come home and find her messing around in the way again. I just couldn’t stand it.”

“Yes, he is wonderful,” said Beryl. “And he seems so very much like you in many ways.”

Jeremy looked down at her with a quick appreciative smile.

“Thank you,” he said. “You couldn’t have said anything that would please me better. I always adored him.”

It was then that Jerry reached down and took her hand, drawing it up within his arm and holding his own over it. It was the first time he had done it just this way. He had been almost shy with Beryl.

They walked along silently for a little, thrilling over the touch of their hands, the look in each other’s eyes.

Then Jeremy, pressing the small hand he held, said with a relieved sigh, “Well, now, I’ve got my brother’s worries off my hands, so let’s talk about us. We’ve known each other a long time. Very far, for you always seemed unattainable to me. You were so beautiful, and so perfectly dressed, and so very gracious and full of lovely manners, that I felt like a gawky country boy, all hands and feet, whenever I came into your presence. But I think I’ve been loving you all these years. How about it? Could you stand me for the rest of your life?”

The shade of the woods was very dense just where they were walking, and Beryl turned and put her face against his arm. “Oh, Jerry!” she breathed softly. “I have always loved you. I was sometimes afraid you would see that shining in my eyes and written on my face.”

And then Jerry folded her in his arms.

“Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!” sang a knowing little bird in a high tree above them, turning his bright little glance down at them, just as if he understood. And who knows, perhaps he did.

The shadows were low on the mossy way as they went slowly back to the house much later.

“Now,” said Jerry in a practical voice, “tomorrow morning, you and I are going to the city to buy you a ring. Not any seven-by-nine one, but a
real
ring that will match your dear self and all that you stand for in my life.”

J
essica had thought she was going up to New York that Monday morning to meet with the would-be bridegroom and show up her hated enemy, Diana. But there came a telegram before she was awake, ordering her to meet her husband out west on important business, and so she had to pack up and get off on another train, in another direction entirely.

She had only time to call Louella before she left, and order her to find out certain things for her definitely, before her return, which she hoped would be in the course of two or three days. And she promised to reward her well if she got all the answers to her questions ready for her return.

So Louella arose and set forth on her quest for answers. For, to tell the truth, she sorely needed the reward promised. She had lazed around too long running up hotel bills, which she hadn’t paid and which would eventually fall to her relative to pay, as in the past.

She went first to the Graemes’ of course, for that was her main first source of information, provided she could get
any
.