Read Online Leave Her to Heaven by Ben Ames Williams - Free Book Online Page B

returned, and Harland heard Mrs. Berent bitter in complaint at the torment the ride had imposed upon her; but he did not hear Ellen’s voice, and when they all gathered at the dinner table she had not come home. Mrs. Robie was concerned.
    â€˜Are you sure she’s all right, Glen?’ she asked doubtfully.
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘She probably wanted to be alone a while. I’ve known her to ride all night, on a moonlit night; and she knows these trails as well as I do.’
    Mrs. Berent tossed her head. ‘She probably imagines her
father is up there with her right now,’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t know where she gets her notions. Certainly not from me!’
    â€˜I like to be out at night myself,’ Robie admitted. ‘There’s a lot of good company in the stars. Did she have a blanket, anything to keep warm?’
    Ruth said quietly: ‘She packed a heavy sweater in her slicker roll. She’ll be all right, I’m sure.’
    Mrs. Berent snorted. ‘She’s a fool — and so am I, to go gallivanting over mountains on a horse at my age. Ruth, I’ve one of my coryzas coming on!’ Harland reflected that she treated Ruth more like a paid companion than a daughter.
    â€˜I’ll fix you up, Mother,’ the girl promised, a twinkle in her eyes.
    When dinner was done, Mrs. Berent had begun to sneeze; and she and Ruth said good night at once. Harland, his emotions deeply stirred by that scene he and the children had witnessed, was alert for Ellen’s return, wishing he might be with her in this hour of her lonely grief, and he waited a while on the veranda, listening for the hoofbeats of her horse. Mrs. Robie presently joined him, and he confessed that he and the children had chanced upon the scene on the heights that afternoon. ‘It was a moving thing to watch,’ he said.
    â€˜Tess told me,’ she assented. ‘And Glen saw you, but the others didn’t know you were there.’
    His own hunger to see her made him resent Ellen’s long delay, and he said: ‘Ellen ought to come back. She must know it will worry you. You’ve enough of a job, keeping us comfortable here, without riding herd on us too.’
    â€˜Oh, I enjoy this,’ she assured him. ‘I mean, making things nice here for Glen and our friends. But Ellen really is difficult, sometimes. It’s not so much selfishness as a sort of — is egoism the word? When she wants to do a thing, she doesn’t take into account the wants of others at all. It isn’t that she overrides them. She simply goes her own way — and they can only submit.’ There was no resentment in her tones, merely a half-amused appraisal. ‘I’ve never seen anyone so wholly sure of herself,’ she confessed.

    Harland nodded, feeling himself aggrieved. ‘I know. When we went after turkeys, she told me exactly what to do. It never occurred to me to argue with her.’
    â€˜Of course not.’ She added after a moment: ‘Her father couldn’t call his soul his own. I used to feel like — slapping her, sometimes. I loved that old man. I’m glad he wanted to come back here.’
    Someone stirred in the shadows, coming quietly toward them, and Harland till she spoke hoped this might be Ellen; but it was Ruth.
    â€˜I saw your cigarettes,’ she said. ‘Don’t feel you must wait for Ellen, Mrs. Robie. She’s all right.’
    â€˜We weren’t sleepy,’ the older woman assured her, and Harland asked:
    â€˜Where do you think she is?’
    â€˜I think she’ll stay up there till dawn,’ Ruth told them. Her voice was warm and heartening in the night. ‘She probably hid to let us pass, and then went back there after we were surely gone.’ She added in faint amusement: ‘Ellen dramatizes things, you, know.’
    Lightning flickered far away, sending a faint wave of radiance across