The Beloved Stranger (9 page)

“We must go back at once!” said Sherrill, making hasty dabs at her eyes with her scrap of lace handkerchief.

“Of course,” said Copeland, offering a large cool square of immaculate linen.

Then he took her hand and led her gravely out into the moonlight, pulled her arm possessively through his, and accommodated his step to hers.

When they came to the long window where they had escaped a few minutes before, he looked down at her.

“Are you all right?” he asked softly.

“All right!” she answered with a brave little catch in her breath, and smiled up at him.

He still held her hand, and he gave it a warm pressure before he let her go. Then they stepped inside the room and saw the end of the long line of guests progressing slowly down the hall and Aunt Pat hovering behind them, looking this way and that, out the front door, and into the vacated library. It was evident she was looking for Sherrill, for as they came forward her brow cleared, and she smiled a relieved smile and came to meet them.

Just an instant she lingered by Sherrill’s side as Copeland stepped to the dining room door to look over the heads of the throng and reconnoiter for seats for them all.

“I don’t know how you have planned,” said the old lady in something that sounded like a low growl, “nor how long this ridiculous performance has been going on, but I thought I’d remind you that it will be necessary for that girl to have some baggage if you expect to carry this thing out. I don’t want to interfere with your plans, but there’s that second suitcase, the one that wasn’t marked that we had sent up. It hasn’t been returned yet, you know. I suppose you’ll have to see that she has things enough to be decent on ship board, unless she has time enough to get some of her own. But if you let that lace evening dress or that shell-pink chiffon go, I’ll never forgive you. It’s bad enough to lose the going-away outfit, but I suppose there isn’t any way out of that. A couple of evening dresses and some casual things ought to see her through. Don’t be a fool and give up everything!” And Miss Catherwood, with her head in the air and a set smile on her aristocratic face, swept on to the dining room.

Sherrill stood startled, looking after her doubtfully. Did that mean that Aunt Pat was angry? Angry yet going to stand by till it was all over to the last detail? Or did it mean that she understood the awful situation better than Sherrill knew? She was a canny old lady. How wonderfully she had stood and met that line of hungry gossip-mongers! But yet, she might still be angry. Very angry! To be the talk of the town when she had done so much to make this wedding perfect in every way. To have people wondering and gossiping about them! It would be dreadful for Aunt Pat!

Sherrill had a sudden vision of what it might be to face an infuriated Aunt Pat and explain everything after it was all over, and she had that panicky impulse once more to flee away into the world and shirk it—never come back anymore. But of course she knew she never would do that!

Then Copeland touched her on the arm.

“Please, do we follow the rest, or what?” and she perceived that they two were left alone in the room, with only the end of the procession surging away from them toward the dining room.

Sherrill giggled nervously.

“I haven’t much head, have I?” she said. “I’ve got to go upstairs a minute or two and put some things in a suitcase. It won’t take long. Perhaps I’d better go now.”

“Yes,” said Copeland thoughtfully. “Now would be a good time. I’ll wait here at the foot of the stairs for you.”

She flew up the stairs with a quick smile back at her helper. He was marvelous! It could not be that he was an absolute stranger! It seemed as if she had known him always. Here she had almost laid bare her heart to him, and he had taken it all so calmly and done everything needful, just as if he understood all the details. No brother could have been more tender, more careful of her. She remembered his lips on her eyelids, and her breath came quickly. How gentle he had been!

She hurried to her own room and miraculously found Gemmie there before her, the suitcase in her hand.

“Your aunt Pat thought you might be wanting this,” said the woman respectfully, no hint of her former surprise in her eyes, no suggestion that anything was different from what it had been when the old servant left her there in her wedding dress ready to go to the church.

“Oh yes!” said Sherrill in relief. “You’ll help me, won’t you, Gemmie?”

With half-frenzied fingers Sherrill went to work, laying out things from her suitcase and bags, separating them into two piles upon the bed. The black satin evening dress, the orchid, and the yellow—those ought to be enough. Aunt Pat wasn’t especially crazy about any of those. She put aside the things that were marked with her own initials; not one of those should go. She shut her lips tight and drew in a sharp little breath of pain.

Gemmie seemed to understand. She gathered those things up quickly and put them away in the bureau drawers. Gemmie’s powers of selection were even keener than Sherrill’s.

It did not take long, three or four minutes, and Gemmie’s skillful fingers did the rest.

“There, now, Miss Sherrill, I can manage,” she said. “You run back. They’ll be missing you.”

It was as if Gemmie was also a conspirator.

“Thank you, Gemmie dear!” said Sherrill with a catch in her voice like a sob, and closed the door quickly behind her.

Copeland was waiting at the foot of the stairs, and they found places saved for them close to the bride’s table, a little table for two, and the eyes of all upon them as they sat down.

Sherrill saw the Markham sisters looking eagerly from Copeland to herself and back again, and nodding their heads violently to one another as they swept in large mouthfuls of creamed mushrooms and chicken salad. She had an impulse to put her head down on the table and laugh, or cry. She knew she was getting very near to the limit of her self-control.

But Copeland knew it also, and managed to keep her busy telling him who the different people were.

After all the ordeal was soon over, even to the cutting of the wedding cake by a bride very much at her ease and enjoying her privileges to the last degree. If Arla never was happy again, she was tonight.

And then after all the matter of the license, which loomed like a peril in Sherrill’s thoughts, was arranged so easily. Just a quiet word from the butler to Copeland, a quiet sign from Copeland to the best man. Sherrill had put money in her little pearl evening bag, which she slipped to Copeland as they went upstairs together while the bride was throwing Sherrill’s bouquet to the noisy clamoring bridesmaids down in the hall. Sherrill and Copeland were presumably escorting the bride and groom to their rooms to change into traveling garb, and no one noticed them enter the little room off the back hall where the representative of the law was waiting.

Just a few quiet questions from the grizzly old man who had come to make the legal part right, and who looked at them as only three more in the long procession that came to him day by day. They waited, those five, the best man doing his best not to seem too curious about it all, while those important seals were placed, and the proper signature affixed, and then Sherrill hurried the bride away to dress. A frightened, almost tearful bride now—afraid of her, Sherrill was sure.

Almost the last lap of this terrible race she was running! There would be one more. She would have to face Aunt Pat, but that she dared not think about yet. This present session with the bride who had taken her place was going to be perhaps the hardest of all.

Chapter 5

S
herrill led her white bride through the two middle rooms again, hurriedly, silently, remembering with sharp thrills of pain all that had happened earlier in the evening. She dreaded intensely the moment when they two would be shut in together again. One would have to say something. One could not be absolutely silent, and somehow her tongue felt heavy, and her brain refused to think.

But Gemmie was there! Dear Gemmie! Ah! She had forgotten Gemmie! What a relief! Gemmie with her most professional air of dignity.

The frightened little bride did not feel relief, however, at her presence. She faltered at the doorway and gave Sherrill a pitiful look of protest. Sherrill drew her inside and fastened the door, feeling suddenly an infinite pity for this girl among strangers in a role that belonged to another.

“Oh, here is Gemmie!” she said gently. “She will help you off with the veil and dress. Gemmie knows how to do it without mussing your hair.”

Arla submitted herself to Gemmie’s ministrations, and Sherrill hovered about, looking over the neatly packed suitcase and the great white box that Gemmie had set forth on the bed.

“Oh, you have the box ready for the wedding dress, haven’t you, Gemmie?” said Sherrill, feeling she must break this awful silence that seemed to pervade the room. “That’s all right. Gemmie will fold it for you and get it all ready to be sent to whatever address you say.”

“Oh,” began Arla, with a hesitant glance toward Gemmie and then looking Sherrill almost haughtily in the eye, “I couldn’t think of keeping it. I really couldn’t!”

“Certainly you will take it,” said Sherrill sternly. “It is your wedding dress!
You
were married in it.
I
wouldn’t want it, you know.”

Arla answered with a quick-drawn, startled “Oh!” of comprehension. Then she added, “And I’m afraid I wouldn’t either!”

Over Sherrill’s face there passed a swift look of sympathy.

“I see,” she said quietly. “You wouldn’t want it, of course. I’m sorry. You are right. I’ll keep it.”

Arla was silent until she was freed from the white veil and sheathing satin, but when Gemmie brought forth the dark slip and lovely tailored going-away outfit that Sherrill had prepared for herself, she suddenly spoke with determination:

“No,” she said with a little haughty lifting of her pretty chin, “I will wear my own things away. Where are they? Did somebody take them away?”

“They are here,” said Sherrill, a certain new respect in her voice that had not been there before. “But—you are perfectly welcome to the other dress. I think it would fit you. We are about the same size.”

“No,” said Arla determinedly, “I prefer to wear my own dress. It is new and quite all right. Wouldn’t you prefer to wear your own things?” She asked the question almost fiercely.

“I suppose I would,” said Sherrill meekly. “And I remember your dress. It was very pretty. But I just wanted you to feel you were perfectly welcome to wear the other.”

“Thank you,” said Arla in a choking voice, “but there is no need. You have done enough. You really have been rather wonderful, and I want you to know that I appreciate it all.”

Gemmie, skillfully folding the rich satin, managed somehow to give the impression that she was not there, and presently took herself conveniently out of the room.

Sherrill looked up pleasantly.

“That’s all right,” she said with a wan smile, “and now listen! I’ve packed some things for you in this suitcase. I think there will be enough to carry you through the trip.”

“That wouldn’t be necessary either,” said the other girl coldly. “I can get some things somewhere.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Sherrill. “You’ll barely have time to make the train to the boat. The ship sails at midnight. You might be able to stop for a few personal things if you don’t live too far out of the way, but you’d have to hurry awfully. You couldn’t take more than five minutes to get them, and you couldn’t possibly pack for a trip to Europe in that time.”

“Then I can get along without things!” said the bride with a sob in her voice.

“Don’t be silly!” said Sherrill in a friendly voice. “You can’t make the trip into an endurance test. You’ve got to have the right things, of course. You’re on your wedding trip, you know, and there may be people on board that Carter knows. You’ve got to look right.”

She wondered at herself as she said all this coolly to this other girl who was taking the trip in her place. It was just like a terrible dream that she was going through. A wild thought that perhaps it was a dream passed through her weary mind. Perhaps she would presently wake up and find that none of all this nightmare was true. Perhaps there wasn’t any Arla, and Carter had never been untrue!

Idle thoughts, of course! She pushed them frantically from her and tried to talk practically.

“I haven’t put much in, just some casual things and three little evening dresses. Necessary underthings and accessories, of course. Some slippers, too, and there’s a heavy coat for the deck. The bag is fitted with toilet articles. You won’t need to stop for any of your own unless you feel you must.”

“Oh, I feel like a criminal!” the bride said suddenly, and sank into a chair with her golden head bowed and her face in her hands, sobbing.

“Nonsense!” said Sherrill under the same impulse with which she might have dashed cold water in the girl’s face if she had been fainting. “Brace up! You’ve gotten through the worst! For pity’s sake don’t get red eyes and spoil it all. Remember you’ve got to go downstairs and smile at everybody yet. Stop it! Quick!”

She offered a clean handkerchief.

“Now look here! Be sensible! Things aren’t just as either you or I would have had them if we’d had our choice! But we’ve got this thing to go through with now, and we’re not going to pass out just at the last minute. Be a good sport and finish your dressing. There isn’t a whole lot of time, you know. Say, that is a pretty frock! I hadn’t noticed it closely before. It certainly is attractive. Come, get it fastened and I’ll find your shoes and stockings.”

Arla accepted the handkerchief and essayed to repair the damages on her face, but her whole slender body was quivering.

“I’ve—taken your—hus–band—” she began with trembling lips.

“You have not!” said Sherrill with flashing eyes. “He’s not my
husband, thank goodness!”

“You’d—have—been—happ–pp–ppy,” sobbed Arla, “if—you—just—hadn’t—found—out! It would have been much b–b–better if I had k–k–k–killed myself!”