The Beloved Stranger (30 page)

“Stop!” said Arla coldly. “You are not the one to talk about anything underhanded. And you would not have found your argument would have stood before a court of law.”

“It would never have come to a court of law. They wouldn’t dream who had them. Besides, I had arranged to sell them at once!”

“You poor fool,” said Arla. “Didn’t you know that that necklace was registered? Those stones were well-known stones. I heard them talking about it at the reception. You couldn’t have got away with it even if I hadn’t interfered. You would have been in the penitentiary before three months were passed.”

The man was white to the lips now and sank back in his chair groaning. It was a piteous sight! Tears filled Arla’s eyes in spite of her resolution.

Then he suddenly raised his head and glared at her again with his bloodshot eyes.

“And I suppose you don’t think they’ll trace your package and come after me to every country in Europe?” he snarled, terror in his face.

“No,” said Arla coolly, “I wrote a note inside the box and told her she must have dropped the necklace into the suitcase when she was packing.”

He was still, staring at her, the strained muscles of his face gradually relaxing. Then he dropped his head into his hands again and groaned aloud, groan after groan until Arla felt she could not stand another one.

At last he spoke again.

“Everything is lost!” he moaned. “I might as well be in the penitentiary. I can’t meet my obligations! I can’t ever get on my feet again! I am disgraced before the world!”

“Listen, Carter!” said Arla in a tone that demanded attention. “You are only disgraced if you have done something wrong. I saved you from doing one wrong thing. I’m glad I could. I never could respect you again if you had done that! But it’s undone now. The necklace is on its way back, and no harm will come to you but losing your business. I’m glad you’re losing that. I hate it! It is what made you forget your love for me and go after another woman. Oh, she may be a great deal more attractive than I am, and all that, but you belonged
to me.
By all that had gone before, you were mine and I was yours. You knew that! By your own confession these past few days, you know it now. Now stop acting like a baby and be a man! How do you think I feel having a husband like you?”

“What can I do?” he groaned.

“Sit up and stop acting like a madman,” said his wife, turning away to hide the sorrow and contempt in her eyes. “If you’ll get calm and listen, I’ll tell you what you can do, and I’ll stand by and help you! What you should do is take the next boat back and hand over your business to your creditors. Then let’s go home and start anew. You can do it, and I can help you. Won’t you listen to reason, Carter, and let us be honest, respectable people as our parents were?”

Carter, slumped in his chair, made no reply for a long, long time. Arla sat tense, every nerve strained, waiting. She knew that her words had been like blows to him. She felt weak and helpless now that she had spoken. It was like waiting to see whether someone beloved was going to die or live.

But at last he lifted his head and looked at her. She was shocked at his face. It had grown old and haggard in that short time. He had the terrible baffled look of one who had walked the heights and been flung to the depths. She had never seen him before with his self-confidence stripped from him utterly.

“I could never get back to that!” he said, and his voice was hoarse and hopeless.

“Yes, you could!” said Arla eagerly. “If you’d just be willing to give it all up and start over again!”

“Oh, you don’t know!” he said, still with that hopeless look in his eyes. “You don’t know it all!”

“You’d be surprised!” said Arla, springing up and going over to kneel beside him with her arm about him. “I know a lot more than you think I know. You left your books out one day, and I thought they were the books you told me to look up that old metropolitan account in. I hadn’t an idea what I was coming on until it was too late.”

He looked at her, startled, blanching. “And you knew all that, and yet you married me?” “Yes,” said Arla, her voice trembling. He suddenly dropped his head upon her shoulder. “I’m not worthy of you,” he groaned. “I guess I never was!”

“That has nothing to do with it, Carter!” she said almost fiercely. “I love you, and
you shall
be worthy! Say you will, Carter, oh, say you will!”

Her tone fairly wrung the promise from him.

“I’m a rotten low-down beast!” he said between his clenched teeth. “I can say I will, Arla, but I don’t even know if I can do what I say I will.”

“Yes, you can!” said Arla in the tone of a mother determined to save her young. “You
shall!
I’ll help you! I’ll make you. When you’re weak, then I’ll be strong for you! I’ve got to! I’ll die if you can’t be brought back to be a decent man again!”

For a long time his face was hidden on her shoulder, and his whole frame shook with emotion, but her arms were about him, and she held him close, her tears raining down unheeded upon his bowed head.

At last he said in a low tone husky with emotion, “If you can love me like that after all I’ve done to you, then perhaps I can! I’ll try!”

Then eagerly she lifted his face to hers and their lips met, their tears mingling.

It was sometime after that that Arla spoke, gently, quietly.

“Now, oughtn’t we to be doing something about a boat to go back on?”

Carter looked up and his capable business expression came upon him.

“I think first, perhaps, I’d better cable to that man that made the offer about the business. He’ll maybe go back on it, or have done something else already, you know.”

“You’re right!” said Arla. “Let’s go together. I can’t be separated from you now till it’s all fixed.”

“Yes, come!” he said, catching her fingers. “Oh, Arla, there’s maybe something for us somewhere, when you can love me like this!”

Thus Arla entered on her life undertaking of making a man.

“This diamond,” she said thoughtfully, looking at the gorgeous ring on her finger, “and those pearls. Are they paid for, Carter?”

She watched him keenly as the slow color mounted to his forehead again, and his eyes took on a shamed look.

“Because if they’re not,” she hastened to say, “let’s send them back, I mean take them back or something.

They’re not really mine, you know. They never were. You got them for her, and I think of it every time I look at them. Someday when we can afford it, you can get me some of my own, and I’d like that much better.”

Carter went and stood by the window, looking out with unseeing eyes. His perceptions were turned inside to himself. He was seeing just what kind of a contemptible failure he had been. Seeing it as nothing else but utter failure could have made him see.

“There’s no end to it!” he moaned hoarsely.

“Yes, we’ll get to the end of it, only let’s make a clean sweep now once and forever. Suppose we sit down while we’re waiting for the answer to that cable and write down a list of things that have to go back or be sold or something, and debts that have to be paid. Don’t forget anything. Let’s just look it all in the face and know where we stand.”

“We don’t
have
a place to stand!” said the disheartened man. “Every foot of ground under us is mortgaged. That’s what you’ve—what we’ve—what
I’ve
brought you to, Arla!”

Arla’s eyes had a strange light of hope in them as she looked at him. He hadn’t said she had brought him to that. He had started to, but he hadn’t said it. He had acknowledged that he had done it himself! There was some hope.

They had about a week to wait for the boat they had decided to take, and they went to cheap lodgings and made little excursions here and there on foot, seeing what they could of the old world in a humble way. Perhaps nothing could have better prepared Carter to go from a life of extravagance into plain homely economy like taking their pleasure without cost. For Arla wouldn’t let them spend an unnecessary cent. She had everything down to the last penny now, and was determined that they should get free from debt.

“Someday,” said Carter, watching a young couple, obviously on their wedding trip as they entered a handsome automobile and drove happily away, “someday I’ll bring you over here, and we’ll see Europe in the right way.”

“Perhaps not,” said Arla, her lips set with determination. “We’ve got to get over expecting things like that. If we ever get rich, it might happen, and then of course it would be great, but it isn’t likely, not for a long time anyway, and we’re not going to expect it nor fret that we haven’t got it. It’s wanting things we haven’t got that has nearly wrecked our lives, and we’re going to stop it! We’re going to have a good time on nothing if we have to, and just be glad.”

There was disillusionment in her voice and eyes, but there was cheer and good comradeship. Carter looked at her in wonder and was strangely comforted.

But Arla turned away her disillusioned eyes and struggled to keep back sudden tears. She was getting on very well, it was true. Carter had been far more tractable than she had hoped, and that gleam of self-abasement had been hopeful, yet she knew it was but transient. He was weak. He was full of faults. He would fall again and again. He would lapse back into his old self. The world was too full of temptations and ambitions for her to hope for a utopian life with him. Hell was there with its wide-open doors, and her strength was so small! She suddenly felt like sinking under it all. Just courage, her own courage, just determination, couldn’t pull him out of this and make him into a decent man again, a man in whom she could trust, upon whom she could lean. Oh, for some strength greater than her own! Oh, for some power to right their lives! Happiness in such circumstances? She knew it was impossible. A good time on nothing? Yes, if they loved and trusted each other perfectly perhaps, but not when one had constantly to bear the other up.

Oh, she would go on as she had promised, stand by him through everything. She loved him. Yes, she loved him. But there was a desolate desperateness about it all. She knew it. She knew it even while she set her beautiful strong red lips in determination to go on and succeed. She knew intuitively that there was something lacking! Some great need that would come, some need for help outside of themselves. Just human effort couldn’t accomplish it.

Would Carter ever come to see that he was radically wrong, not just unfortunate? Would his remorse over his failure ever turn to actual repentance?

Oh, for something strong and true to rest down upon! And vaguely even while she tried to set her courage once more for higher attainment, she knew that what she was trying to do was just another of the world’s delusions. She never by her own mere efforts could save Carter from himself. She might help perhaps, better things in great degree, make life more bearable, more livable, but still in the end there would be failure! What was it they needed? Oh, there must be something, some way!

So with desperation in her eyes, a vision of a future full of useless efforts, she turned back to her heavy task.

Chapter 21

S
herrill, filled with a startled premonition that clouded her eagerness over the package, tore off the wrappings and pulled out the little bundle in its cover of silk, shook out the bit of lingerie, a sort of consternation beginning to dawn in her face. This was her own, one of the things that had been in Arla’s suitcase!

Then she recognized the little leather case and snapped open the catch, dropping out the note that Arla had written. It fell unheeded to the floor.

But there were no lovely little bottles in the case! What was this, just handkerchiefs? She pulled them out, just catching the heavy little lump knotted in the handkerchief, before it fell.

With hands that trembled now with excitement, she unknotted the corners of linen that Arla had tied so hastily, and stood staring as the gleam of the great green stones flashed out to her astonished gaze.

“Oh, Aunt Pat! It’s
come!
My emerald necklace has
come back!
Look! The stones are all here! Gemmie! Oh, Gemmie! Where are you? The emerald necklace has come back! It’s
found
! It’s found! Oh, isn’t it wonderful that I should find it just now?”

Gemmie hurried in from the bathroom where she had been pretending to pick up the towels and place clean ones. Her eyes were still suspiciously red, and she came and stood there looking at the jewels, the most amazed, embarrassed, mortified woman whom one could find, heartily ashamed at all she had been thinking and doing, almost half suspicious yet.

“Where did they come from?” she asked sharply. “Who took them?”

“What does it matter now?” sang Sherrill. “They’re here and I don’t have to worry anymore! Oh, I’m so glad, so glad!”

“What’s this on the floor?” said Aunt Pat, whose sharp eyes had sighted the twisted note.

Gemmie stooped down and handed the note to Sherrill, and Sherrill read it aloud. Read the name, too, Arla McArthur, and never thought how that last part was once to have been her own.