The Beloved Stranger (18 page)

There was an ominous silence while Arla struggled to control her voice. Presently she spoke in a tone of utter sadness as if she were removed from him by eons of time.

“Then all you told me last night was untrue!” she said. “Then you lied to me about your great love that you said you had for me!”

Suddenly the man grew red and shamed looking.

“I didn’t say it was a lie!” he said. “This has nothing to do with that!”

“No, but I did!” said Arla. “And it has everything to do with that! I went through agony and humiliation to save you from marrying a girl you did not love because I believed you still loved me, and had only fallen for her because you needed her money. I was trying to save you from yourself, to save our love that in the past has been so sweet and true. And this is what I get! You tell me I have put you in a hole! Well, I’m in the same hole! What do you think it is for me to be married to a man that talks that way? Do you think I’m enjoying a wedding trip like this?”

“Well, it was none of my doings!” said the man, shrugging his shoulders angrily. “I told you what kind of a fix I was in. I explained the whole matter to you, didn’t I?”

“Not until you had failed to get me to go out west on a vacation where I couldn’t find out about it until afterward! Not until your wedding invitations were about to come out,” said Arla steadily.

“Well, I
tried
to tell you before. I tried to let you know by my actions—!”

“Yes, you tried to be disagreeable to me!” said Arla. “I suppose I ought to have understood you were trying to cast me off like a worn-out garment. But I didn’t! I thought you were worried about your business. I forgave everything because—I—loved you!”

The man gave an angry exclamation.

“There you are bawling again! Oh, women! They do nothing but make trouble, and then they weep about it. A man is a fool to have anything to do with women!”

Arla lifted angry eyes.

“You would have talked that way to your paragon of a Sherrill Cameron, I suppose?” she said, dashing away her tears.

He gave her a furious look.

“Can anything be more tantalizing than a jealous woman?” he sneered. “Well, I think we’ve gone far enough. I didn’t come up here to listen to the kind of talk you’ve been giving me. I wanted to make you understand that we’re in a very critical situation and we’ve got to do something about it! We’ve simply got to avoid meeting people, at least together.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“Just what I said! We can’t afford to have Sheldon get onto this. And he isn’t the only one on board that knows us. I met Bixby this morning in the smoking room. He asked after Sh—he asked after the bride, of course, and made some silly joke about having admired her first, and I had to tell him you were seasick, that you were a bad sailor and might not be able to appear at meals during the voyage. He knows Sheldon, you know, is a sort of a henchman of his, and it won’t do to have him talking. I think that’s our best bet anyhow to save complications; just you stay close in your cabin, except late at night we can slip out and take a walk on deck where the rest don’t usually come.”

A wave of indignation passed over Arla’s beautiful face.

“So that is the way you intend to treat me on my wedding trip!” she said bitterly. “Keep me shut up in my room! Your bride! Well, I’ll know how much to believe the next time you tell me you love me! How about you staying in and letting me do the talking?”

“But don’t you see that wouldn’t do? They all know Sh—that is, they all knew Miss Cameron.”

“I see that you are perfectly crazy about money. You love money better than honor or decency or me.”

“Now you’re being unreasonable!” said the man irritably. “I’ve told you our fortune hangs upon what happens in the next few days. I can’t help it, can I, that my investments failed? Everybody else is having the same trouble. If the wedding had gone through as planned, there wouldn’t have been any trouble about money. I could have gotten around the old lady and gotten a loan of a hundred thousand or two to tide me over. But now—”

“But now, since she found you out and the fortune isn’t available, you mean to take it out on me—who really is the wronged one from the beginning. Well, I won’t stand for it, that’s all! I’m not going to stay shut in and have you roaming around perhaps with some handsome brunette who has another fortune lying around!”

Her eyes were blazing wrathfully. Her tone was low but very angry. He watched her furtively. It wouldn’t do to let her get started on that line. She could mess things up a lot more if she chose to.

“Look here, Arla!” He swung around upon her. “Be sensible! Haven’t I told you that my business will go under completely and leave me utterly bankrupt if I can’t tide over the next six months and pay my indebtedness? And now, just when I think I’m going to be able to swing it, you get childish and balk at helping me.”

“I’m not childish, and I don’t balk at helping you when it’s right and reasonable. But I won’t be lied about, and I don’t intend to allow anybody to mix me up with the girl you didn’t marry, not to save twenty businesses. Besides, I don’t see what a mere fifty thousand matters. Even if Mr. Sheldon does refuse to pay the twenty-five thousand now, and the other twenty-five thousand in two or three months, you still have a lot more thousands that you can’t do anything about. You can’t save your business any way you try, and it’s better to realize that and give it up. Just let them take over what you have, and don’t try to launch out. Begin again in a small way and I’ll help you!”

“Ah, but there’s where you are mistaken, Arla! I’ve found a way. I’m sure I’ve found a way to swing the rest of that. Just last night a way came. I can’t tell you about it yet, but it’s sure! And we shall be on easy street yet, my girl! Just have a little patience. A day or two after we’ve landed on the other side, I shall have everything all fixed up.”

His eyes narrowed and he looked at her cunningly.

She gave him a quick furtive glance.

“And suppose you didn’t? Suppose you are mistaken?” Her breath came sharply. “Don’t you know you are throwing away something sweeter and finer than any money or any business that you could ever have?”

Perhaps because her words went deeper than she understood, they angered him the more.

“Get out of my way!” he roared, forgetting he was on an ocean liner. “If you’re my wife, take my orders, then! Don’t you dare to stir out of the cabin again in daylight unless I say you may. Go! I don’t want to see you anymore; you make me tired! Talk about wedding trips?
I’m
having a glorious one!”

“Hush!” said Arla imperatively in a low controlled voice. “There’s your Mr. Sheldon just below you coming up the stairs!”

Carter turned and saw the puffy red face of the financier advancing pompously up to where he stood, but when he turned back to give Arla a warning scowl, she was not there. There seemed no way that she could have gone, but she was gone. Carter was left embarrassed and awkward to meet the dignified scrutiny of the man he wished to placate. He wished frantically that he knew how much of his conversation had been overheard.

Chapter 13

B
y a way that her need had come to her in the sudden crisis, Arla had fled to her stateroom. Having locked her door, she stood for an instant with clenched fists down at her sides, her teeth set in her trembling underlip, fighting back the tears that filled her eyes, fighting down the anger, the remorse, the dismay that threatened to overwhelm her. Then she began to walk up and down the small room like a young lion in a cage.

Suddenly her mood changed. She grew calmer. She took a book and a warm coat, went out on the deck, found an out-of-the-way nook where Carter would have to hunt to find her, and sat down, pretending to read, but really thinking out the way before her step by step. If she had to go back twenty-four hours, would she have been willing to marry Carter? She refused to answer that question. It was too late. She must go forward!

She stayed in her hiding place until long past the lunch hour, subsisting on the cup of broth that was brought around on deck in the midmorning. Still Carter had not found her, or perhaps had not chosen to seek her. Then soon after lunchtime a young man came breezily by her chair, paused, hesitated, and then cried out, “Great Caesar’s ghost! If this isn’t Arla Prentiss! Say now, what do you know about that? I’m in luck, aren’t I?”

Arla looked up, dismay in her soul, for there before her stood the soda clerk from her hometown drugstore, crude and breezy and familiar as ever. He had known her all her life, had bestowed various boxes of candy upon her, had attempted to pay her attention sometimes, though she had always been able to laugh him off. Still, he was genuine, and somehow the real hearty admiration in his eyes now warmed her heart, even while she was wondering what Cater would say when he found that Hurley Kirkwood was on board.

But there was no dismay in Hurley Kirkwood’s heart. He was joyously glad to see her. He had been somewhat like a stray cat till he sighted her, having no acquaintances on board, and being adrift in the world for the first time in his life.

“Say now, this is great!” said Hurley, quickly drawing up a camp stool and settling down to enjoy himself. “Say now, Arla, are you alone? Taking a trip to Europe alone? Say now, if I can be of any service!”

Arla gave a little shiver.

“No, I’m not alone,” she smiled. “My husband is around here somewhere! I’m on my wedding trip, Hurley!”

“Boom! Just like that!” said Hurley, slapping his hands together noisily. “Hopes busted at the first word! Well, I congratulate you, Arla. But say now, when did it happen? You kept it mighty still, didn’t you? Didn’t any of the home folks come to the wedding? Your aunt Tilly wouldn’t have missed it, I’m sure, if she’d known.”

Arla suddenly realized that there was another part of her world yet to be dealt with.

“Yes, it was rather sudden,” said Arla. “You see, Carter found he had to go abroad, and of course it made a splendid wedding trip. I had practically no warning whatever. We just got married and rushed off to catch the boat.”

“Well, you certainly put one over on the hometown,” said Hurley. “Sorry I didn’t know about it. You might have called. There’s about a dozen I know would have come on to see you off. And me, why, I could have made it easy. I been in New York three days just bumming!”

Arla tried not to shudder again at the thought. It seemed to her that nothing could have been more perfectly the last straw at that terrible wedding of hers than to have had Hurley Kirkwood appear on the scene. She registered a distinct thanksgiving that she had been saved so much at least.

And yet, as he talked on, giving her homely items of domestic interest about her aunt Tilly’s rheumatism, old Mrs. Pike’s having lost all her money when the bank closed and going to the poorhouse, Lila Ginn’s latest escapade of running away with a drummer, and the party the high school kids had at a roadhouse that made all the school board sit up and take notice, somehow Arla felt the tension in her taut nerves relax. After all, it was comforting just to hear of home folks and hometown and things that happened in the years before Carter had loved and tried to marry another woman. It was good to forget if only for a few minutes the problems and perplexities of her own present situation.

Hurley Kirkwood made a good soda clerk. He knew how to kid everybody in town with a special brand of kidding for each individual. There was something vivid and interesting about Hurley in spite of his crudeness, and presently Arla forgot herself so far as to be laughing heartily at some of the stories Hurley told.

Hurley had saved up his money, and he was just explaining to Arla how he had always wanted this trip to Europe and mapping out the course of travel he had planned for himself, when suddenly a stern and forbidding Carter arrived on the scene. He fairly glared at the poor soda clerk, whom he had never liked, mainly because he presumed to be friendly with Arla. Carter had never approved of Arla’s being friendly with Hurley. Just because she had gone to school with him did not give a mere soda clerk the right to take the girl of a man like himself to
anything!
Not even a ball game in the early evening played in his own neighborhood! Not even if he started out alone and just
met
Arla and sauntered with her to the grandstand and bought her peanuts, which is what had happened one summer evening when Carter’s interest in Arla was in its initial stages.

Therefore Carter glared at Hurley and gave him a passing: “Oh, Hurl, you here! Not serving in your official capacity as drink slinger on board, are you?”

There was utter contempt in Carter’s tone. All the venom and fury that he had been holding in his heart for Arla during the morning because she had not obeyed him, and had been evading him, he vented in that one contemptuous sentence.

And Hurley, happy, crude, a bit obtuse, not easily hurt, could not but recognize the unfriendliness and grew red and embarrassed. He attempted to rise to the occasion by slapping the dignified Carter on the shoulder and offering congratulations in his native style.

“My sympathy, Cart!” he said with a guffaw. “I hear you been getting tied! Only wish I’d been there to be best man. I’d have given you a great send-off! But say now, isn’t it great we both got on the same little old boat together! My word! I got something to write home to the little old hometown now! Mebbe that won’t make ‘em all sit up and take notice! Cart and Arla got tied at last! We been looking for news and an invite this long while, and then you went and done it on the sly! But say now, I certainly do wish you a lotta happiness!”

Carter’s face had grown more and more stern during this tirade, and now his tone was like a slap in the face as he made another attempt to put this fool from home in his place.

“I am sure Mrs. McArthur and I are greatly obliged to you for your interest,” he said disagreeably, and then turned to Arla sternly.

“My dear, I shall have to ask you to come down to the stateroom at once. There is a matter I must discuss with you.”