The Beloved Stranger (17 page)

They had come out now, crossed the servants’ hall and the back sitting room where Carter had dressed for his wedding, and paused at the head of the stairs for a moment. Sherrill slipped her arm lovingly about the old lady’s shoulders, and Aunt Pat patted her hand cheerfully. Then as they stood there they heard the doorbell ring, and some packages were handed in, two great boxes.

“More presents!” gasped Sherrill, aghast. “Oh, if there was only something we could do to stop them!”

“Well,” said the old lady with a grin, “we might send out announcements that you were not married and ‘Please omit presents’ at the bottom of the card.”

Once again Sherrill’s tragedy was turned into ridicule, and she gathered up her courage and laughed.

“You’re simply wonderful, Aunt Patricia! You brace me up every time I go to pieces. That’s just what—!” Sherrill stopped suddenly, and her cheeks got red.

“That’s just what what?” asked the old lady, eyeing her interestedly.

“Oh, nothing! You’ll laugh at me, of course. But I was only going to say that’s just what that stranger did last night. He seemed to know exactly how I was feeling and met me at every point with a pleasant saneness that kept me going. I shall always be grateful to him.”

“Hmm!” said Aunt Patricia approvingly. “Well, I thought he had a lot of sense myself.”

Then Gemmie came forward with more boxes.

“We’re not going to open them tonight, Gemmie, no matter what it is,” said Miss Catherwood decidedly. “We’re just too tired to stand the sight of another lamp or pitcher or trumpet, whichever it is. We’ll let it go till morning.”

“But it’s flowers, ma’am,” protested Gemmie. “It says ‘Perishable’ on them, Miss Catherwood!”

“Flowers?” said the old lady sharply, giving a quick glance at Sherrill as if she would like to protect her. “Who would be sending flowers now? It must be a mistake!”

“It’s no mistake, ma’am; there’s one for each of you.

This small one is yours, and the big one is Miss Sherrill’s.”

She held the two boxes up to view.

Sherrill took her box wonderingly. It seemed as if this must be a ghost out of her dead happy past. For who would be sending her flowers today?

She untied the cord with trembling fingers, threw back the satiny folds of paper, and disclosed a great mass of the most gorgeous pansies she had ever seen. Pansies of every hue and mixture that a pansy could take on, from velvety black with a yellow eye down through the blues and yellows and purples and browns to clear unsullied white. There were masses of white ones arranged in rows down at the foot of the box, with a few sprays of exquisite blue forget-me-nots here and there, and the whole resting on a bed of delicate maiden hair fern.

The fragrance that came up from the flowers was like the woods in spring, a warm, fresh, mossy smell. Had pansies an odor like that? She had always thought of them as sturdy things, merry and cheery, that came up under the snow and popped out brightly all summer. But these great creatures in their velvet robes belonged to pansy royalty surely, and brought a breath of wildness and sweetness that rested her tired eyes and heart. She bent her face to touch their loveliness and drew a deep breath of their perfume.

The card was half hidden under a great brilliant yellow fellow touched with orange with a white plush eye. She pulled it out and read the writing with a catch in her breath and a sudden quick throb of joy in her heart. Why should she care so much? But it was so good to have flowers and a friend when she had thought all such things were over for her.

“I hope you are getting rested,” was written on the card just above his engraved name, Graham Copeland.

A sudden chuckle brought Sherrill back to the world again, the warm glow from her heart still showing in her cheeks, and a light of pleasure in her weary eyes.

“The old fox!” chuckled Aunt Pat.

“What is the matter?” asked Sherrill in quick alarm.

“Why, he’s sent me sweetheart roses! What do you know about that? Sweetheart roses for an old woman like me!” and she chuckled again.

“Oh, Aunt Pat! How lovely!” said Sherrill, coming near and sniffing the bouquet. “And there are forget-me-nots in yours, too! Isn’t it a darling bouquet?”

“Yes, and the fun of it is,” said Aunt Pat with a twinkle of sweet reminiscence in her eyes, “that I had a bouquet almost exactly like this when I went to my first party years ago with my best young man. Yes, identical, even to the lace paper frill around it, and the silver ribbon streamers!”

Aunt Pat held it close and took deep breaths with half-closed eyes and a sweet faraway look on her face.

In due time Patricia Catherwood came out of her brief trance and admired the box of pansies.

“Aunt Pat,” said Sherrill suddenly, her great box of sweetness still in her arms as she looked down at them a little fearfully, very wistfully, “he wouldn’t have sent these if he had—”

“No, of course not!” snapped the old lady. “I declare I’m ashamed of you, Sherrill Cameron. Can’t you ever trust anybody anymore just because one slim pretty man disappointed you? Just get on the job and learn how to judge real men, and you won’t have any more of that nonsense. Take those flowers to your room and study them, and see what you think about the man that sent them.”

“Oh, I trust him perfectly, Aunt Pat. I’m quite sure he is all right. I
know
he is! But I was afraid you would think—!”

“Now, look here, if you are going to keep charging me with all the vagaries that come into your head, ‘you and I will be two people!’ as an old nurse of my mother’s used to say. For pity’s sake, forget those emeralds and go and put your flowers in water. Unless, perhaps, you’d rather Gemmie did it for you!” she added with an acrid chuckle.

“Oh no!” said Sherrill, quickly hugging her box in her arms, her cheeks flaming crimson. “Look, Auntie Pat. Aren’t they dear? And yours are dear, too. Almost as dear as yourself.”

There was a tremble in her voice as she stooped and kissed the old lady on the sweet silver waves of hair just above her brow, and then she hurried away laughing, a dewy look about her eyes.

It was so nice not to feel utterly forgotten and out of things, she told herself as she went to her room with her flowers. It was just like him and his thoughtfulness to do this tonight! This first night after that awful wedding that was not hers! Somehow as she took the pansies out one by one and breathed their sweetness, laid them against her cheek with their cool velvety touch, the weariness went out of her. It seemed to her as if by sending these blossoms he had made her understand that he knew this was a hard night and he was still standing by, although he could not be here, helping her through. She thought the joy that bubbled up in her heart was wholly gratitude.

“Pansies for thoughts!” she said to herself and smiled with heightened color. “Is that why he sent them? Forget-me-nots! Oh—!”

She rang for a great crystal bowl and arranged the flowers one at a time, resting on their bed of ferns, and she was not tired any longer. She had lost that sense of being something that was flung aside, unwanted.

She got herself quickly into a little blue frilly frock for dinner and fastened a few pansies at her breast, pale blue and white and black among the fluffy frills. She came down to find the old lady in gray chiffon with a sweetheart rose at her throat, and the bouquet otherwise intact in a crystal vase before her.

It was after all a happy little meal. The two had lost their sense of burden. They were just having a happy time together, getting nearer to each other than they ever had been before, and the hazy forms of a youth of the past dressed in the fashion of another day, and a youth of the present very much up to date standing in the shadows behind their chairs.

“I’ve been thinking of that question you asked me, why all this had to come to you,” said the old lady. “I wonder—! You know, it might have been that God has something very much better He was saving for you, and this was the only way He could make you wait for it!”

“I shall never marry anybody now, Aunt Pat, if that’s what you mean!” said Sherrill primly, though there was a smile on her lips.

“Hmm!” said Aunt Pat, smiling also.

“I could really never again trust a man enough to marry him!” reiterated Sherrill firmly, nestling her chin against the blue velvet cheek of the top pansy.

Aunt Pat replied in much the same tone that modern youth impudently use for saying “Oh yeah?”—still with a smile and a rising inflection—“Ye–es?”

“This man is just a friend. A stranger sent to help in time of need,” explained Sherrill to the tone in Aunt Pat’s voice.

“Hmmm!” said Aunt Pat. “It may be so!”

Chapter 12

A
rla’s triumph was brief. She found Carter anything but a lover the next morning. He was surly and crabbed to her at breakfast, found fault with her attire and her makeup, told her her lips were too red for good taste, even went so far as to say that Miss Cameron never stained her fingernails. Arla felt as if she had been stabbed. She could scarcely finish her breakfast.

But because she had determined to make this marriage a success, she bore his criticism, even ignoring his reference to his other bride though the tears were not far away, and a smoldering fire burned in her eyes. Was this other girl to be held up to her as a paragon the rest of her days? Oh, he was cruel!

She studied his sullen face, his selfish lips, and saw these traits in him for the first time!

And she, by marrying him in that underhanded way, had forfeited a right to protest against such words. She could not flare out at him and tell him he had loved her enough to marry her and therefore he need not compare her with another. He had not married her by his own initiative; she had married him, and taken him as it were unaware, where he could not help himself.

The cold flamed into her face and then receded, leaving it deathly white and making the redness of her lips but the more startling!

Then when they went on deck, almost the first person he sighted was a man from whom he had borrowed largely but a few days before on the strength of his marriage into the Catherwood fortune.

Without explanation he dashed around a group of deck chairs, upsetting one in his haste, colliding with a man, and swinging around to the other side of the ship without any seeming reason at all.

Arla followed him breathlessly, trying not to appear to be running a race. She was nonplussed. What was the matter with Carter? She had never seen him act in such a crazy way.

When she at last came to a stop, panting at the secluded hiding place that he had selected, she watched him in dismay. His face was actually lowering.

“What in the world is the matter with you, Carter?” she asked, almost tenderly. She began to think perhaps all that had happened yesterday had unsettled his mind.

“Everything in the world is the matter with me!” he said in a harsh tone. “Everything terrible that could happen to a man in any position!”

Arla studied him, still with that troubled look in her eyes, knowing that he would presently explain himself. She had not been his secretary for some months without knowing his habits.

“That was Mr. Sheldon that we passed as we came up the companionway. Didn’t you recognize him?” He turned and glared at her as if she were responsible for Mr. Sheldon being on board.

“Sheldon? What Sheldon?” asked Arla in a pleasant tone. “I don’t know any Mr. Sheldon, do I?”

“No!” said Carter. “You don’t
know
him, socially of course, but it’s not many hours since you witnessed his signature on some papers in the office!”

He paused impressively.

Arla looked puzzled and waited again, but Carter was still trying to impress her. At such time he could take on a fairly ponderous look, though he was not a large man, by merely swelling up proudly and looking down at her.

“Well, what of it?” asked Arla half impatiently after she had waited a reasonable time for explanation.

“What of it? And
you
can say what of it! You who wrote out those papers for him to sign, you who heard the whole conversation and know that it was on the strength of my expectation of being able to raise a large sum in the near future that he loaned me the money I needed to finance—” He stopped abruptly, conscious that this very wedding trip was a part of the business he had to finance, the ring that sparkled on her finger, the pearls she had worn to the altar. He couldn’t quite tell her that! Even in his present state of mind, he couldn’t be as raw as that.

“Well—?” she said again almost haughtily, watching him narrowly. His whole attitude toward her, his very tone had become offensive.

“
Well?
No, there is nothing well about it!” he snapped. “That man is a friend of the Catherwoods. He knows the Catherwood lawyer intimately. And he knows Sher—he knows Miss Cameron by sight. I have been with her when we met him. Don’t you realize—? You can’t be so blind as not to know that it would be nothing short of disastrous for him to know what has happened! Why, it’s even conceivable that he might stop payment on that check now. He could radio a message to his bank, you know. And then I’d be in a worse hole than I’m in already. You know as well as I do.”

“Well, but he couldn’t possibly know what had happened from merely meeting us together on deck!” said Arla haughtily.

“Couldn’t he? You don’t think he’s sharp enough? Well, let me tell you he’s keen. How long do you think it would take him to cancel his agreement if he discovers that instead of marrying an heiress I am tied to a penniless secretary?”

The words cut to the quick! Arla caught her breath and set her lovely teeth sharply in her red underlip, trembling with humiliation and anger.

He cast a furtive glance at her and grew only the more hateful, realizing perhaps to what depths he had descended.

“Well, you needn’t cry-baby about that!” he said sharply. “You might as well understand what kind of a hole you’ve put me in!”

“I’ve
put you in—!” said Arla fiercely.
“I!”

“Yes, you!” said the man, now beyond all bounds of self-control. “I didn’t do it, did I? It was
you
who came to the Catherwood house fifteen minutes before the hour set for the wedding and got hysterics all over the place and drove me crazy so that I didn’t know what I was doing! It was
you
that staged a scene with Sherrill and got yourself married to me, wasn’t it? I didn’t know anything about it, did I? What could
I
do?”