The Beloved Stranger

Chapter 11




Lutie sped on swift feet and was presently back again, her eyes shining, a tiny green particle held in the palm of her hand.

Miss Catherwood examined it carefully and Sherrill drew close.

“It is, it is!” cried Sherrill. “It’s one of the wee little stones by the clasp, Aunt Pat!”

“Yes,” said Aunt Pat grimly. “Whoever got away with the rest of the stones missed this one anyway.”

Then the old lady turned to Lutie.

“Well, you’ve done me another favor, Lutie. Here’s a bit of money I happen to have in hand. Take it and run home now and get something extra nice for supper just for my thanks offering. Tell your mother I’ll be over soon.”

When Lutie had finished her happy and incoherent thanks and gone, Sherrill came and put her arms around the old lady’s neck.

“You are wonderful, Aunt Pat!” she said and kissed her tenderly.

“Nonsense!” said the old lady with an embarrassed grin. “Nothing wonderful about it! What’s money for if it isn’t to help along your fellow men and women? And besides, you don’t know but I may have my own selfish reasons for doing it.”

“A lot of people don’t feel that way about it, Aunt Pat!”

“Well, that’s their opinion!” she answered. “All I’ve got to say is they miss a lot, then.”

“But Aunt Pat, aren’t you going to do anything more about this now? Aren’t you going to call the police and report the loss, or—ask anybody, or anything? Aren’t you even going to tell the servants?”

“I’ve already told the servants that someone who was here last night lost a valuable necklace, and offered a good-sized reward for finding it, but only Gemmie knows it was your necklace. Gemmie would miss it, of course, when she came to put your things away. She was always very fond of those jewels and was pleased that I was giving them to you. She would have to know. But Gemmie won’t say anything.”

“But dear Aunt Pat! I do want everything possible done to find it even if it makes a lot of unpleasantness for me. I’d rather have it found. To think that you kept it all these years and then I should lose it the very first time I wore it! Oh, Aunt Pat, I must get it back to you!”

“Back to me!” snorted the old lady, quite incensed. “It’s not mine anymore. It’s yours, child, and I mean to have it back to you, if possible of course, but if not there’s nothing to break your heart about. Stop those hysterics and smile. You are just as well off as you were last week. Better, I think, for you are rid of that selfish pig of a lover of yours!”

Sherrill suddenly giggled and then buried her face on her aunt’s shoulder.

“Aunt Pat,” she said mournfully, “why do you suppose this had to happen to me? Why did I have to be punished like this?”

“I wouldn’t call it punishment, child,” said the old lady, patting Sherrill’s shoulder. “I’d say it was a blessing the Lord sent to save you from a miserable life with a man who would have broken your heart.”

“But if that is so,” wailed Sherrill, “why didn’t He stop me before it went so far? Before it would hurt so much?”

The old lady was still a minute and then said, “Perhaps He did, and you wouldn’t listen. Perhaps you had some warnings that you wouldn’t heed. I don’t know. You’ll have to look into your own life for that.”

Sherrill looked at her aunt thoughtfully, remembering little happenings that had made her uneasy. The time Carter had gone away so hurriedly back to his former home without explanation. The letter addressed to him in a girl’s handwriting that had fallen from his pocket one day, which seemed to embarrass him but which he put back without a word. The telegram he sent her to say he was called to New York when afterward she discovered he had been west again, and when she innocently asked about it he gave but a lame excuse. The conversation she had overheard about him on the trolley calling in question his business principles. The strange way he had acted about not wanting to purchase her necklace at a certain store where she had admired a string of pearls, but had insisted on choosing one from another place. Oh, little things in themselves, but they had made her vaguely uneasy when they happened. Had they been warnings? Perhaps she should have paid more attention to them. But she had been so reluctant to believe anything against him, so determined to shut her eyes to any fault of his!

There was that day, too, when she had come to the office unannounced and found Arla sitting very close to Carter, her hand in his, her head on the desk, crying. They had jumped apart, and Arla had gone quickly out of the room with her handkerchief to her eyes. Carter had been angry at her for coming in without knocking, and had explained that Arla’s mother had just died and he had been comforting her; there was nothing else to it. That incident had troubled her greatly, and they had had more than one discussion about it, until her own love and trust had conquered and she had put it away from her mind. What a fool she had been!

She had argued afterward that of course he was not perfect and that when they were married she would help him to overcome his faults. He seemed so devoted! Then there would surge over her that feeling of his greatness, his ability and good looks, his many attractions, and she would fall once more under the spell of wonder that one so talented as he should love her.

Sharply, too, there came to memory the night before when she had stood looking into her own mirrored eyes, wondering and shrinking back. Was that shrinking the result of those other fears and warnings? Oh, what a fool she had been! Yes, there had been plenty of warning. She was glad of course that she was mercifully delivered from being married to him, but oh, the desolate dreariness of her present situation! A drab life of loneliness to be looking forward to. To have thought herself beloved, and then to find her belief was built on a rotten foundation!

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!”