Читать книгу More Than Conqueror (Musaicum Romance Classics) - Grace Livingston Hill - Страница 7

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For a brief interval she stood still before the instrument, staring hungrily into it, hoping against hope that there would yet be perhaps one more word from her beloved. And then she was suddenly aware of her mother standing in the doorway watching her, astonished.

"Why, my dear!" said the mother. "How did it happen that you came home so early? Dan told me you would probably be late!"

And suddenly, the long wait of the evening with its precious thrilling climax was swept away, as if it had all been a dream, and she was back in her everyday life again, with the usual things and people surrounding her.

"Oh," she said dazedly. "Oh, why no, Mother, I didn't go."

"You didn't go? But, my dear, I told him I was sure you would be delighted. I am afraid you must have been very rude, for he was quite insistent about it, and I understood him to say that you had known about this for some time. Didn't I make you understand that I had promised you would call him? It certainly was very rude of you if you did not."

"But I did, Mother. I called him right away after you went, and left word for him that I couldn't go to-night. I left word with their butler, and then Dan called up himself later and I explained that I couldn't go to-night. I had something else to do that was important."

"Important?" said her mother, eyeing her bewilderedly. "What was it, dear? I don't understand. I thought this was your free evening. I told him that."

"Yes, Mother, but this was something that came up that you didn't know about. I had promised to be at home all the evening for a phone call."

"A phone call! Why, who was calling that you felt was important enough to make you miss going out with Dan? When you had practically promised him you would go with him?"

Blythe's face flushed.

"But I hadn't promised Dan, Mother. He had never made a definite date for this, and he can't expect me to dance attendance every time he speaks. I have a few other friends and interests."

"Oh," said her mother significantly. "I thought you considered Dan's wishes would be paramount. I thought you were especially fond of him."

"Oh, not especially fond, Mother. He's just a good friend. But I wasn't rude to him, really, Mother. I left word I couldn't go to-night, and when he called up I tried to explain to him that something had come up that I felt I ought to do."

"But who was this person who presumed to ask you to stay at home all the evening? Couldn't you have called him up and told him that you found you could not be here?"

"No, Mother. I had no way to reach him till he called. He was a soldier friend who was leaving—for the front—and he had asked if he might call me to say good-bye when he left. I said yes, I would be at home all the evening."

"But a soldier boy, just one of those soldiers at the canteen? Strange boys you don't know very well? It couldn't possibly have made any difference with him. I think, Blythe, that sometimes you confuse your obligations and let trifles hinder more important things. In fact, I've been a good deal worried at the number of hours you are spending in that social service down there at the canteen. Of course I want you to be patriotic and all that, but you are just sticking in the house and working hard almost every minute of your life, and it is time you had a little brightness and fun, or you will wither up and get to be old before your time."

"Oh, Mother!" protested the girl. "I—you—you don't understand. This was a special soldier, going into danger, and his mother had died. He wanted somebody to say good-bye to before he went."

"Oh, yes," said her mother a bit sadly. "They're all going into danger, of course, and of course we all feel sorry for them. But you, Blythe, can't take every one of those soldier boys on your heart and feel sorry for them. There are plenty of people over there at the center, good, motherly women, who would be glad to give a boy good advice before he leaves for the front. That's what they are there for. He didn't need to pick out a young girl and hold her up for an evening just to say good-bye. Those boys haven't always got good sense. I have no patience with them. It is all right, of course, for you to play games with them and make them have a cheerful time, but I do think you ought to hold your home time free for your own friends. Blythe, I'm really worried about you. I don't want you to go to extremes in anything, and you know these boys in their uniforms may be very attractive and all that, but when they get across the water they'll forget all about the girl that sacrificed what she wanted to do just to humor them."

But Mother, it wasn't like that! I didn't want to go with Dan to-night. I really didn't. I was tired and wanted to stay at home and get caught up with several things, and I had some letters to write. You see——"

Blythe hesitated and looked troubled. She was almost on the verge of telling her mother all about Charlie Montgomery, only somehow this seemed no time to bring out that precious experience and tell it in every detail. Her mother was in no mood to sympathize and understand just now. She was evidently too much annoyed about her failing Dan Seavers.

"You see," said Mrs. Bonniwell, "I had a long talk to-day with Mrs. Seavers. She is so pleased that you are going so intimately with Dan. She says it has made her feel so safe and happy about him, so content that he is in good company and not getting in with a wild set. She has been greatly troubled about a girl who sings at one of the nightclubs, in whom he has been interested, and she was so relieved when he took to asking you to go places. I do think you ought to consider other people as well as those young boys in the soldiers' canteen. You know it would be really worthwhile to help a young man like Dan Seavers. A young man in his position would have a great many temptations, and a young girl with right principles can often strengthen her young men friends by her friendship and be doing something really worthwhile. You know Dan is in line for an officer's commission, and what he is will be an influence on all the soldiers under him. If I were you I would consider how wonderful it would be to help anchor Dan to the right kind of people."

"But Mother, that's just it. I don't like the kind of men and girls that come around Dan. More and more it is getting so that I feel uncomfortable in his company. I don't think you would like them either, Mother, if you could be with us sometimes."

"Well, that's unfortunate, but don't you think a good girl can usually dominate a situation wherever she is and show them how much better a right-minded girl is than one who is loud and coarse and common?"

Blythe looked troubled.

"No, Mother, not always. I used to think so, but lately I've been places with Dan where I felt as if I were being soiled and trampled underfoot."

"Blythe!" said her mother. "You don't mean Dan would allow anybody to be rude to you while you were in his company?"

"I don't think Dan feels the difference. He doesn't understand why I don't enjoy going places with people like that."

"Oh, my dear! I'm sorry to hear that. But don't you think you might be able to win him away from that kind of people?"

"I'm afraid not, Mother," said the troubled Blythe sadly, thinking in her heart that there were going to be a lot of questions to settle that she had not thought of yet. How was she going to make her mother understand? Oh, this was something she had to think out before she talked any more about it, even with her mother. But for the present her inmost heart told her that she had no taste nor interest in going anywhere with Dan or any other young man, now that she knew of Charlie's love, and while he was off engaged in a terrible undertaking for the cause of freedom. Oh, of course, she would have to go about as usual and be pleasant and interested in life as it had to be lived here on this side of the world, but good times were not the chief aim of her existence anymore. Something had happened to her since Charlie Montgomery had told her of his love for her and the great undertaking to which his life was pledged. To a large extent that undertaking must be hers, too, hers for interest and prayers. Hers to place first in the list of daily plans. Hers to cherish as the greatest possible undertaking. Because she and Charlie were one in heart now, they must be one in purpose, too. And if, in the working out of that purpose, it came about that Charlie had to die to accomplish it, well then, it was her part to die, too, to a lot of interests that had up to this point been a part of her life.

But she couldn't tell all this to her mother now. Mother would protest and tell her she was crazy. Mother didn't know what it was to love someone who was going out to die. She would say Blythe was morbid. She would turn heaven and earth to get her interested in the world and get her out among the young people again, make her stop her delightful work among the nursery babies, and maybe make her stop even the Red Cross classes. Mother would tell people that Blythe hadn't seemed well lately and she felt her daughter needed a rest, maybe insist upon her going away somewhere, to the shore or the mountains or down to Florida. There was nothing in life that Blythe wanted to do less than to go away from the home where Charlie would write if he had any opportunity to write at all. Oh, what should she do?

Of course, if worst came to worst, she could tell her mother the whole story, tell of Charlie's coming and how she had always admired him. But could she make Mother understand now, after all this excitement? Evidently her mother was thoroughly on Dan's mother's side and willing to have Dan take her out anywhere, just so that his mother's worries might be appeased. But Mother just did not understand, and how could Blythe make her see it in the right way? Mother had always been so sane and reasonable. She wouldn't for a moment approve of things Dan did and said when he was out among that crowd whose company he seemed to enjoy so much. Was it possible that Dan could be turned back to a more refined crowd? Was it really right that she should try to help him in this way? How the thought of it irked her, in the light of the wonderful love of a real man!

Well, she would have to think this out, try to find out what her duty was, and of course if it was duty, she must do it. But it need have nothing to do with the new joy that had come into her life. That was something secure, that was hers. So far, hers in secret, but hers, and it was something that nothing, nobody could ever take away from her. Not even death, because it was that rendezvous with death that had set his heart free to come to her and tell her of his love. Oh, death could be cruel, cruel, and the fear of death could bring agony—the death of a beloved one! But death with all its stings could not take her beloved's love away from her. Somehow that thought bore her along over the immediate present with its problems and bravely into the dim future that loomed ahead with so many terrible possibilities. She must sit down and think this thing all through and see what was the right thing to do. Oh, if she only had somebody to talk it over with.

Of course her mother, normally, would be the one, the only confidante she had ever had. But how could her mother judge aright in this thing? She would be too horrified by the unknown. Charlie would mean nothing to her now but a menace. She would not at first realize what a difference death made in the conventions of the world. Even if it was only a rendezvous and didn't reach a final end, it did make a difference, and by and by when this matter of pleasing Mrs. Seavers was past, she was sure it would all be perfectly understood by her mother. Anyway, it wasn't really hers to tell—yet. It was their precious secret, hers and Charlie's.

All these things flashed through her mind like a message she was reading to herself, while her mother talked on.

And then her mother, watching her daughter's changing expressions, finally dropped wearily into a chair and said, "Oh Blythe! What is the matter with you? It is not like you to be so regardless of others' needs. Why will you not give the help you can so easily give? If you could have seen his poor mother!"

Suddenly Blythe put on a resolute look.

"Why, of course, Mother, I'll do all I can to influence Dan for the right things, but you don't seem to understand that he practically wants to own me, to order me around, and insist I shall go whenever he commands."

"Oh my dear! I don't think he means it that way. He just likes you very much, and really wants your company."

Blythe's face grew serious.

"Well, perhaps," she said hesitantly. "But to-night I didn't want to go, and I felt I had a right to say no. Bedsides, Mother, people are beginning to talk as if Dan and I were engaged and we're not. I don't want people to get that idea! I don't like to be watched and talked about!"

"Nonsense!" said her mother. "Nobody is talking about you. That's just a sign you're getting self-centered. I don't believe anybody has ever thought of such a thing."

"Yes, they have," said Blythe firmly. "I heard them myself to-day as I was going into the Red Cross room."

"You heard someone talking about you? Who in the world would dare to do that?"

"Oh, it was only Anne Houghton, and she's always been disagreeable and jealous, but she was talking to Mrs. Bruce, and she assented to everything Anne said, and I just felt as if I wanted to get out and get away from them all. I won't desert the work I've promised to do for the war. But I do think I'd rather not go out quite so much with Dan. Oh, I'll go sometimes, of course, but please don't urge me when you see I'd rather not."

"Why, of course not, dear," said her mother anxiously, "but I wish you would tell me what they said that has made you feel so uncomfortable."

"Oh, Anne was just saying that I thought I was so great because I had Dan Seavers tagging around with me everywhere, that I wouldn't let him out of my sight, and things like that. Mother, I don't like to be talked about that way. It takes all the joy out of life."

"Well, of course it isn't pleasant," said her mother thoughtfully. "But, after all, that wasn't such a dreadful thing for her to say. She's probably jealous. Maybe she admires him herself very much. However, I don't want to urge you to do anything that does not seem pleasant to you."

"Thank you, Mother dear," said Blythe, coming over to her mother and kissing her tenderly, and as she stood so with her mother's arms about her, she felt a quick impulse to tell her all about Charlie Montgomery. And perhaps she would have done so, except that her father came in just then with some news about the war that he had just heard, and the time seemed again not to be just right for the story. Perhaps she should wait and think it over a little more, plan out in her mind just how she would make them understand what kind of a boy Charlie had always been, introduce him to them as it were, bit by bit, so that they would see the beauty and tenderness of his nature. So that they would not be shocked by the abruptness of what he had done in telling her, an almost stranger, that he loved her.

Then her father turned on the radio and there came a session of reports of what had been going on in some of the war zones: men sent on secret missions behind the enemy lines to get certain information and to spy out the enemy's plans; others flying straight into death to accomplish some great necessary destruction of the enemy's works. They were almost like a suicide squad.

Blythe caught her breath, and one small hand flew to her throat involuntarily.

"Oh!" she breathed softly under her breath, and looked aghast at her father and her mother. But they were not noticing her then. They were only looking pitiful and sad over the terrible state of the world in these wartimes, never dreaming that one of those young men whom they were distantly pitying might be the lad their cherished daughter loved, and who was even now hastening on to such a death somewhere. "A secret mission" he had called it. Oh, was this what he was going to do? Blythe did not know, could not know, perhaps would never know till the war was all over and the missing ones were counted up.

So, the moment passed, with Blythe's heart suddenly overwhelmed with understanding, and a terrible sadness settling down upon her which kept her silent. Then suddenly they were all roused to realize that it was getting late and the morrow had duties early in the morning. So they said good night and hurried away to their rest.

Back in her own room, Blythe settled down in her chair, her knees still weak from that sudden startled realization of Charlie's peril. She looked about her. Was it only this morning that she had gone downstairs to hear him tell her that he loved her? It seemed that she had lived years since the morning dawned and she went happily down to pleasant duties, without a thought that this war was coming into her life. Really coming. Not just by forcing her to go without a few luxuries, doing a few unusual things, economizing—less candy and sugar and coffee, fewer beefsteaks, walking miles instead of using her car. The war had struck to the center of her being now, through the boy she had watched over the years and greatly admired, and who had suddenly become beloved beyond anything that had ever touched her life before.

For some time she sat there quietly and relaxed in her chair, trying to think it all out.

And would the morrow bring her a letter? No, for that would scarcely be possible. Her soldier had said all mail would have to go to headquarters before it could be forwarded to her, that is, after they had really started on their mission. And now that she was beginning to understand a little what terrible possibilities loomed before such missions, her heart trembled at the thought.

But oh, how she longed to get a word from him, his handwriting written to her! How wonderful that was going to be! A letter from Charlie Montgomery, all her own! She must get to sleep to hurry on another day, to bring that letter nearer to her.

Quietly, with her light turned out because she didn't want her mother to come in and ask her what was keeping her up, she got ready for sleep and, creeping into her bed, lay thinking over all that had happened since morning. But though she had been good friends with Dan Seavers for years, not one thought of him came to spoil her bright vision.