The Strange Proposal (28 page)

“That’s wonderful!” said Mary Elizabeth. “I can’t ever tell you how splendid I think it is that you’re willing to stay here a few days and look after her. I was afraid you would have to hurry right back the next day.”

“Child, I wouldn’t do that!” said the doctor, looking kindly at her. “I wouldn’t do that to John. John’s the best young man I know. I love John Saxon like my own son. If I had a daughter, I couldn’t think of any better future for her than to know she was going to marry John Saxon. Young lady, I don’t know how well you know him, or whether you have other plans for your future, but if you haven’t, just take my advice and get acquainted with John Saxon. You couldn’t do better for yourself.”

There was a twinkle in the doctor’s eye and a grin on his wry old lips as he said it, but he gave Mary Elizabeth a searching look, and she turned as red as a peony.

“Well, all right, Miss Wainwright,” he went on, returning to his formal voice. “You’ve relieved my anxiety very much. We’ll try to work it in a few days. I’ll have a little talk with Saxon as soon as the worst danger is over, and we’ll plan to go north as soon as we can.”

For the next two days the little group of people centering round that sickbed were busy and a bit breathless. Anxiety was still in all their hearts, fear lurked not far away, and there were constant ups and downs. Mary Elizabeth marveled that the nurse could stand it. For each setback brought Mary Elizabeth to the point of utter discouragement. But the nurse went steadily on from hour to hour, taking whatever came, and never seemed to lose hope.

But there was one thing that troubled Mary Elizabeth, and that was a sort of veil, or wall, that seemed to have come between herself and John Saxon. She couldn’t understand it.

All night long that first night after he had seen her, her heart kept waking up and singing with the thought of his head down on her shoulder, his wet lashes against her face. But when morning came and she saw him, while his face lighted with greeting, it still had an aloof look, as though he was glad that she was there, but he must not come nearer than a look.

At first it did not worry her, because she thought that while his mother was so ill he could not take time nor thought for anything else, but when it went on all day, and all the next day, even though the doctor’s word had gone forth that Mrs. Saxon was practically out of danger, his aloofness began to trouble her deeply. She could not forget it, no matter what she was doing, for almost it seemed that he was avoiding her, and what could be the cause of that? Certainly he had shown great delight that she was here! She just could not make it out.

Sam seemed to be a bit puzzled by their relation, too, for several times he made an effort to throw them together, all to no avail.

It was the morning that Mrs. Saxon seemed so decidedly better that John Saxon announced his intention of driving down to the village. But he did not ask Mary Elizabeth to go along. In fact, Mary Elizabeth took particular pains not to be in evidence when he was starting, so that he would not think he had to ask her, for by this time she was getting most sensitive and keeping as much out of his way as possible.

All this worried Sam, who adored them both and wanted nothing better in life than to see them delight in each other’s society.

Mary Elizabeth slipped away over to the plane until Sam and John Saxon would be gone. There were things she could do over there to tidy up a bit, and when she saw them drive away she could go back and fix up the beds and the kitchen.

She got everything in order and was just starting back, but she had gone only a few steps when John Saxon came across the road and confronted her. He was looking almost haughty, with his nice chin raised a little, the way he had been doing lately. Mary Elizabeth felt that he was hurt at her for having forced so much assistance upon him, but his eyes were looking straight into hers now, as if he would see deeper than just eyes were supposed to see.

“Mary Elizabeth,” he said, and his voice had a quality of demand in it that small boys’ voices have sometimes when they are half puzzled, half angry, wholly worried, “did you ever get my letter?”

Mary Elizabeth’s eyes opened wide in astonishment, and the bright color flew into her face.

“Oh, yes,” she said eagerly, “why of course I did! What do you mean? Didn’t I tell you in my answer that I got it? You didn’t think I would have written all that if I had never got it, did you?”

“Mary Elizabeth! Did you write me an answer?”

“Certainly!” said Mary Elizabeth a bit formally, remembering some of the things she had said in that letter, her eyes very starry, though her chin was lifted now a bit haughtily. If John Saxon didn’t like what she had said, she couldn’t help it now, could she? But there must be some way to keep tears from coming into her eyes just at this critical moment.

“When did you write?” demanded the small boy in John Saxon, almost as if he had shaken her and told her to divulge the secret at once or she would have to suffer for it.

“A few days before we started down here,” she told him shamefacedly, knowing now, quite suddenly, that she had waited far too long to answer a love letter like that. “I couldn’t write you sooner,” she faltered. “I had to think things out—”

But John Saxon was gone.

Like a whirlwind, he had dashed away again back to the house, leaving Mary Elizabeth standing there in the sand with the little pink and white and crimson pea blossoms creeping all about her feet on their lacy vines, and a great hawk over her head circling and looking down, wheeling, slanting, a big menacing shadow at her feet whenever he came between her and the sun.

There she stood and looked after him with sinking heart. He was angry, then, that she had kept him waiting so long for an answer! Angry! And she hadn’t thought John Saxon could get angry. But now she saw that he had a right to be angry, and the tears welled up and rolled down her cheeks that had been so pink a moment before and had suddenly gone white. Would she ever, ever be able to atone for having waited so long before she answered that letter? For now she saw how her heart had really wanted to write that letter at once, and she had been holding back because the conventionality with which she had been born told her not to be too hasty. And now he was angry, and her heart had told her all the time that he would be! What should she do?

Then while she was still standing there, John Saxon’s old jalopy came racketing out the drive and down the road past her, and John, driving like a wild man, did not even look her way.

Right down there in the sand among the pink and white and crimson blossoms she dropped and putting her face into her hands, began to weep, right where anybody might have seen from the house if they all hadn’t been much too busy to watch.

And when she had wept the tears all away, she suddenly lifted up her face and began to laugh. She had just remembered how like an angry little boy John Saxon had looked as he drove away, and he wouldn’t be angry like that, would he, if he didn’t care? And besides, what did he mean, asking her when she wrote? Didn’t he get her letter yet?

And now she understood and laughed the more.

Afterward when she had laughed a good deal of her worry away and got a bit of hope hung out in her eyes, she laughed again at the puzzled glance there had been on Sam’s good, honest freckled face.

Then Mary Elizabeth got up and went back to the house to work.

John Saxon drove with all his might to the village to the post office.

“I haven’t been to the post office since I mailed that letter to you, kid!” he said to Sam, who was with him, like a faithful dog, never speaking unless he saw the time was favorable, just sitting there waiting for him. “I haven’t had time. I haven’t had a chance to get away from the house!”

Sam looked at him with a puzzled frown and wondered why that was so important. He kept on wondering while John Saxon went in to the post office, and then he wondered some more when his friend came out with a handful of mail in his hand and his eyes happy as he looked down at the pile of letters he was carrying.

John handed Sam a bill.

“Run over to the store and pick out anything you think they need at the house. You know what is wanting better than I do just now. I’ll stay here and read my letters,” he said as he sprang into his seat, already tearing the end off of one particular letter.

Sam caught sight of the writing on that envelope and knew his cousin had written it. Now, when had Mary Beth written to John Saxon? What did it all mean?

And what would Mary Beth write to John Saxon for? She hadn’t known much about him till he told her! Of course, she had met him at the wedding, and likely it was something about that. Perhaps he had carried off her handkerchief or something by mistake that night and had sent it to her and she had written to thank him. That might be it. Probably it was something like that. Or else he was mistaken and that was just some writing that looked like Mary Beth’s, some other girl, perhaps. But that in turn made him uneasy. He didn’t want any other girl but Mary Beth in John Saxon’s life! It troubled him a lot as he walked through the hot sand to the grocery store and looked around for things he remembered they had needed. Cereal and sugar and butter. Raisins. Mary Beth said she’d found a cookbook and could make a rice pudding if she only had some raisins. Sam bought the raisins and a few other things that appealed to him and sauntered slowly over toward the car where John Saxon was still absorbedly reading his letter. Sam stepped back into the store and selected a few more simple articles they could use, and kept a weather eye out toward the car till he saw John Saxon fold that letter and put it in his breast pocket. Then he came hurrying with his packages. Sam was discreet at times, almost uncannily so.

There was no mistaking the look of relief and exaltation on John Saxon’s face on the way back to the house. Sam wondered and wondered. Perhaps, after all, the letter was from that new doctor he was going to study with. Still, no, his friend would tell him if it was anything like that.

Sam racked his brains all the way home, but he kept his mouth shut, and when they arrived at the house, just as if he had been telling Sam all about it, John Saxon turned to him with a bright look.

“Sam, where do you suppose Mary Elizabeth is? Would she be in the house, or over at the plane? Would you mind finding her and telling her that I’d like to see her a few minutes if she can spare the time? Tell her I’ll sit right here in the car till she comes.”

Sam gave him one astonished look and then got out with a respectful “Yessir!” instead of his usual “Okay.”

“Mary Elizabeth!” of all things! When had he ever called her that before? It was always a formal “Miss Wainwright” when he mentioned her at all, which had been but seldom.

Mary Elizabeth had been washing lettuce that she had picked in the shaded little garden that John kept close to the house for a few things that needed constant care to thrive. She shook the bright drops of water from the green leaves and laid them in the porous earthen dish as Sam delivered his message. Then she looked up with such a radiant smile that Sam almost shielded his face from it, and she said with a real lilt in her voice, “Yes, tell him I’m coming right away, Sam!”

Mary Elizabeth came walking demurely around the house in her simple white dress with her sleeves rolled up above her elbows and her shining eyes looking down at the springy path of the grass she trod.

She was trying to look casual and demure, as if she were coming out to take an order concerning something to be done on the house, but the smile on her lovely mouth belied her manner, and when she looked up and met John Saxon’s gaze, her face broke into radiance.

“Will you go somewhere with me for a few minutes, Mary Elizabeth? Somewhere where we can be alone? I’ve just read your letter. I hadn’t been to the post office for days!”

Mary Elizabeth sprang into the car and settled down beside him, and the old jalopy racketed joyously away down a sweep of sandy road that was seldom traveled into a bit of scrub and hammock land, till they came out to a quiet, shaded place with a glimpse of a little lake not far away, and there the car stopped.

“Mary Elizabeth!” said John, putting out his arms and gathering her close. “My darling!” He drew her head to his shoulder and her lips to his. And Mary Elizabeth lay close to his heart as if she had come home.

It was some time before they talked at all, and then the man, looking hungrily down into the girl’s eyes as if he could not get enough of the sight of them, said, “Mary Elizabeth! Why didn’t you write sooner? I thought you didn’t care! I thought you were scorning me and teaching me a lesson not to be so presumptuous!”

“I couldn’t,” said Mary Elizabeth, looking up into his dear face and softly smoothing the knot of the little old cotton tie he was wearing, as if it were costly silk and precious. “I didn’t dare! John, I was afraid about your God! I was afraid He wouldn’t think I was fit for you. I’d just found out I was a sinner. Sam made me see it. And I knew that something had to be done before I could ever be in the same class with you. I had to find out about that first before I wrote you.”

He pressed his arms closer about her and touched her forehead and her eyes with reverent lips.

“Did you, find out?” he murmured gently, as if the matter were too sacred to speak of aloud.

“I think so. Sam said I had to accept Christ as my personal Savior. I’m not sure that I know all that it means, but I did the best I could. I told Him I did! And the next day I wrote you my letter. I didn’t feel that I was any more fit to be loved by one like you, but I had done the best I could, and so I wrote. But do you think your Christ will think it is all right for you to love me? I wouldn’t want to come between Him and you in any way.”

“Oh, my darling!” said John, stopping to touch her lips once more with reverence. “My Christ loves you, don’t you know that?”

“I don’t see how He could,” said Mary Elizabeth. “I’ve never paid the slightest attention to Him before! And I thought—well, I thought when you didn’t look at me, nor hardly speak to me, that you thought I wasn’t worthy, and you were sorry you had written me what you did when you didn’t know my name.”