The Beloved Stranger

Chapter 18




Presently the days settled down into regular normal living again, the lovely pansies had faded, and nothing more had been heard from the stranger.

Sherrill tried to put him out of her mind, tried not to start and look interested whenever the doorbell rang or a package arrived. She tried to curb the feeling of disappointment each night when she went up to her room, that he had not come that day.

“He has forgotten us long ago,” she told herself. “It was a mere incident in his life. He was just a passing stranger. He probably felt that he had done his entire duty toward us by sending those flowers. They were only sort of a bread-and-butter letter, and saved him the trouble of writing one. He has likely gone back to Chicago by this time and gotten immersed in business again. If he ever thinks of us again, it will be to laugh sometime with his friends and tell about the unusual wedding he once attended. Why should I be so silly as to keep on watching for him?”

But still she could not forget the stranger. And still there came no word of the lost jewels.

Aunt Pat kept a watchful eye upon Sherrill. She sent for maps and guide books. They studied routes of travel, considered various cruises, planned motor trips, and all the while watched over Lutie’s family, agreeing that they must not go away anywhere till the operations were all over and the invalids back at home doing well.

When the third Monday night came, Lutie was up at the hospital waiting to hear the result of her mother’s operation. Lutie’s mother was in a very serious condition. Sherrill was restless and finally decided to go to the Bible class alone.

To her surprise the whole loving group of people at the mission knew about Lutie’s anxiety and spoke tenderly of her. When the time of prayer came, Sherrill listened in wonder to the prayers of faith that went up from many hearts for the life of Lutie’s mother. Sherrill was amazed that they dared pray so confidently, and yet always with that submissive “Nevertheless, Thy will, not ours, be done.”

She had a feeling as she listened that she had been sitting in a dark place all her life, and that during the last three weeks light had slowly begun to break. It seemed that tonight the light was like glory all around her.

These people actually lived with God, referred everything to Him, wanted nothing that He did not send. They were in a distinct and startling sense a separated people, and she was beginning to long with all her heart that she might truly be one with them.

The meeting was more than half over, and the lesson for the evening was well under way when the woman who sat next to Sherrill on the end seat next to the aisle, with a whispered word about catching her train, got up silently and slipped out. A moment later Sherrill became aware that someone else had taken her place, someone who had possibly been standing back by the door.

He came so silently, so unobtrusively, that Sherrill did not look up or notice him till he sat down, and then suddenly she seemed to feel rather than see that he was looking earnestly at her.

Startled, she glanced up to find herself looking straight into Graham Copeland’s smiling eyes!

Then Sherrill’s face lighted with a great gladness, and something flashed from eye to eye. He reached quietly over and clasped her hand, just a quick clinging pressure that no one would have noticed, and her fingers returned it. Then something flashed again from hand to hand, some understanding and knowledge of mutual joy.

It was like finding a dear old friend after having lost him. It was the knowledge that everything precious in the world had not been lost after all.

She lifted another shy glance and caught that look in his eyes again, and was thrilled to think he was here. What a wonderful thing this was! Never in all her acquaintance with Carter McArthur had there been anything like this, but she did not think of that now. She was just glad, glad, glad!

He took hold of one side of her Bible when another reference was announced, their hands touched again, and joy ran trembling in the touch. Shoulder to shoulder, their heads bowed over the sacred Book, they read the holy words together, and new strength and hope and sunshine seemed suddenly to come to Sherrill. Her friend had come back. He was all right. Her strange unwelcomed fears had been unfounded. Now she knew it. She had looked into his eyes and all was right. She was even gladder for that than that he was here.

This meeting with him might last only a few minutes more—it might never come again; but she was glad that he was this kind of man.

The class was crowded that night, and the chairs were very close together. The aisles were narrow. Yet the nearness was pleasant, and the fellowship with God’s people. She stole a glance at her new friend’s face and saw that he was watching the speaker, listening interestedly. He was not bored. He had not come here just to take her away home and make a fashionable call upon her. He seemed to be as glad to be here as she was to have him, and to have entered into the spirit of the hour like any of them. Was that just an outstanding characteristic of his that he could adjust himself to any surroundings and seem to be at home?

But no, she felt he was truly in sympathy here, more even than he had been at the wedding reception. To a certain extent he had been an outsider there, entering in only so far as would help her, but it really seemed as if he belonged here. Or was that just her imagination?

She wondered if she ought to suggest going home. Perhaps he had only a short time. But he settled that by suddenly turning and smiling into her eyes and whispering, “He’s very fine, isn’t he?” and suddenly her joy seemed running over so that she could hardly keep glad tears from her eyes. To have a friend like this, and to have him feel as she did about this sacred hour. Why, that was greatest of all!

Then it came to her that just the other day she had felt that all the troubles in the world were crowded into her small life, and now all at once they had lifted. What did it mean? Was God showing her that He had infinitely greater joys in store for her somewhere than any she had lost?

These thoughts raced swiftly through her mind while her companion fluttered the leaves of the Bible, finding the next reference as if his fingers knew their way well about the greatest book in the world, and then their hands settled together holding it again.

Well, thought Sherrill, I seem to be losing my head a

little, but I’m just going to be glad while gladness is here. And then somehow their spirits seemed to go along together during the rest of the meeting, flashing a look of appreciation when something unusual was said.

The rest of the hour seemed all too short. It was like a bit of heaven to Sherrill. When it was over Copeland spoke graciously to the friends about her and greeted the teacher when he came down to speak to them.

“You know, we have a great Bible school out in my city, too,” he said with a smile as he shook hands with the teacher. “I don’t get as much of it as I would like. I’m pretty busy. But sometimes I run in there for a bit of refreshment.”

Out into the sweet darkness of the summer evening he guided her, his hand slipped within her arm in a pleasant possessive way. He seemed to have already located her car, and as they went toward it he said in vibrant tones, “I didn’t know you were interested in this sort of thing. I’m so glad. It gives us one more tie for our—friendship. I’m sure now that you must know the Lord Jesus.”

“And oh, do you?” Sherrill’s voice was vibrant, too. “I’ve only known Him a very short time, and I’m very ignorant, but—I want to learn.”

Sherrill’s hand was clasped in his now, but she did not realize it till he put her in the car.

“Shall I drive?” he asked, as if he had been taking care of her all his life.

“Yes, please,” she said eagerly, “and tell me, how did you happen to be there? How did you know I—?”

“Your aunt told me the way,” he said, anticipating her question. “I got to the house just after you had left. She told me how to find you and I came at once.”

“Then—you had been there some time?”

“Yes. I came in during the singing just before the lesson. They certainly can sing there, can’t they?”

“Oh yes. But I’m sorry I didn’t see you. I could have come out—” She hesitated.

“Wasn’t it better to stay?” he asked, smiling, looking down into her face. “It was a sweet and blessed fellowship, and I needed something like that. I’ve been in a feverish sordid atmosphere ever since I left here, and I was glad to get the world out of my lungs for a little while. Besides, I enjoyed watching your face. I got a double blessing out of the meeting from enjoying your interest.”

“My face?” said Sherrill in sudden confusion. “Oh!” and she put up a hand to her flushed cheek. “Were you where you could see me? I didn’t know there was anything in my face but ignorance and amazement. I can’t get used to the wonders of the Bible.”

“It was very—” He hesitated, then added, “Very precious to watch,” and his voice was almost reverent as he spoke.

“Oh!” said Sherrill, at a loss for a reply. But he helped her by going on to speak in a matter-of-fact voice.

“I’m glad to get here at last,” he said. “I’ve been going through a strenuous siege of work, in Washington and New York, back and forth, sometimes in such haste that I had to fly. No time to call my soul my own, and then an unexpected business trip to the south which kept me working night and day. I thought I would be able to stop off for a few hours before this, but I couldn’t make it. I was afraid you would have forgotten me by this time.”

“No,” said Sherrill quickly. “I could not forget you. You came to me in a time of great trouble, and I shall never forget how you helped me. I’m so glad to have another opportunity to really thank you. I didn’t half know what I was doing that night.”

“Well, I’m glad to be back at last,” he said. “I didn’t want to lose this friendship. It seemed to be something very rare sent to me right out of the blue, you know.”

He gave her a wonderful smile that set her heart thrilling.

I’m surely losing my head, she told herself. I mustn’t be a fool. But I can’t help being glad he is like this even if I never see him again.

Sherrill was sorry when the short ride was over and they had to go into the house and be conventional. She treasured the little quiet talk in the darkness. It was easier somehow in the dark to get acquainted and not be embarrassed at all they had been through together.

Aunt Pat was waiting for them eagerly, and Sherrill felt her kind keen glance searching her face as she sat down.

“Now,” said Aunt Pat, “before we begin to talk, how much time have we got to get acquainted? What time did you say you had to leave?”

“I think your local train leaves about ten after eleven,” answered Copeland. “I have a taxi coming for me in plenty of time, so I do not have to keep thinking about that. But perhaps I shall be keeping you up too late?”

He looked eagerly at the old lady.

“Late?” said the old lady, laughing. “We’re regular night hawks, Sherry and I. We often sit up till after midnight reading. I’m only sorry you have to go so soon.”

All too rapidly the brief time fled. He seemed so like an old acquaintance that he fit right into their pleasant cozy evening. Aunt Pat discovered that they had mutual acquaintances in Chicago, and Sherrill sat listening to their talk and wondering how she could ever have entertained that haunting fear about this wonderful stranger. It was such a relief to have the fear gone forever. Not that she ever really suspected him herself—she still loyally maintained to her own heart—but she had been so afraid that others would if it ever came to an investigation.

Then he would turn and look at her suddenly and smile, and something would happen to her heart, something wild and sweet that never had happened before. She did not understand it. Never in all her acquaintance with Carter McArthur had there been anything like this. It was like finding an old friend after having lost him. It was knowing that she had not lost every precious thing in the world after all. It was rest and peace and joy just to know she had a friend like that.

The lovely color flooded into her face, and joy was in her starry eyes. That pinched look of suffering that Copeland had seen in her face the first night was gone. He looked again and again to make sure. It was not there anymore. The glance in his eyes when he turned toward her always with that wonderful smile thrilled her as nothing had ever done before.

In vain she chided herself for feeling so utterly glad just because of his presence. He was only making a call, she told herself. But that gladness would keep surging over her like a healing tide that was washing away the pain and anguish she had received the night she found out that Carter was false to her. He might go away in a few minutes and she never see him again perhaps, but still she would be glad, glad that he had come tonight and reassured her that he was just what she had thought him at first. New strength and life and hope seemed to come to her as the moments flew by.

Aunt Pat took herself off upstairs for a few minutes to hunt for a book they had been talking about, and Sherrill had a little time alone with him.

“You are feeling better?” he said in a low tone, coming over to sit beside her on the couch, scanning her face searchingly.

“Oh yes,” she said, deeply touched at the tenderness of his tone. “I’m beginning to see some reasons why it all had to be. I’m beginning to understand what I was saved from!”

He reached out and laid his hand quietly over hers for an instant with a soft pressure.

“That is good to know!” he said gently. “You were very brave!”

“Oh no!” she said, her eyelids drooping. “As I look back, I’m so ashamed at the way I played out. It was dreadful the way I let you stand by and go through all that awful reception! But I’m so glad to have this opportunity to really thank you for what you did for me that night. As long as I live I will always feel that that was the greatest thing any man ever did for any woman in trouble. An utter stranger! You were wonderful! If you had been preparing all your life for that one evening, you could not have done everything more perfectly.”

“Perhaps I had!” he said very softly, his fingers closing about hers warmly again, his eyes catching hers as they lifted to look wonderingly at him, and holding her gaze with a deep sweet look.

Then suddenly Gemmie appeared at the door with her rubber-silent tread bearing a small table and placed it, covering it with a festive cloth. Gemmie, seeming to see nothing, but knowing perfectly, Sherrill understood, about those two clasped hands between them there on the sofa.

Gemmie brought coffee in a silver pot with delicate cups and saucers, tiny sandwiches, cinnamon toast, little frosted cakes, and then an ice. Gemmie managed to remain nearby until Aunt Pat returned with her book.

Gemmie watching like a cat!

And the two talked, pleasant nothings, conscious of that touch that had been between them, conscious of the light in each other’s eyes, glad in each other’s presence, getting past the years of their early youth into a time and place where there was only their two selves in the universe. Wondering that anything had been worthwhile before, thinking, each, perhaps, that the other did not understand.

Aunt Pat came back with her book and ate with them, a happy little meal. She watched her girl contentedly, watched the young man approvingly, and remembered days of long ago and the light in a boy-lover’s eyes. That was the same light, or else she was mightily mistaken.

Then all at once Copeland looked at his watch with an exclamation of dismay and sprang to his feet.

“It is almost time for my train!” he said. “I wonder what has become of my taxi! The man promised to be here in plenty of time.”

“Gemmie! Look out and see if the taxi is there!” called Aunt Pat.

“No, ma’am, there’s no taxi come. I been watching out the window!” said the woman primly with a baleful look at Copeland as if his word was to be doubted. Gemmie thought he likely hadn’t told the taxi man to come at all. She thought he likely wanted to stay all night.

“It isn’t far; I’ll try to make it!” said Copeland. “I’m sorry to leave in such a rush. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?

I’ve had such a wonderful time!”

“Why, I’ll take you, of course,” said Sherrill, suddenly rousing to her privilege. “My car is right outside. Come, out this side door. We’ve time enough.”

“But you’ll have to come back alone!” he protested.

“I often do!” she laughed. “Come, we can make it if we go at once—although I wish you could stay.”

“But I mustn’t!” said Copeland. “I must get back at once. It’s important!”

He took Aunt Pat’s hand in a quick grasp.

“You have been good to let me come!” he said fervently. “May I come soon again?”

“You certainly may!” said Aunt Pat. “I like you, young man! There! Go! Sherrill’s blowing her horn. You haven’t any time to waste!”

With an appreciative smile he sprang to the door and was gone. Aunt Pat watched them drive away and then turned back with a smile of satisfaction to see Gemmie standing at the back of the hall like Nemesis, looking very severe.

“That’s what I call a real man, Gemmie!” said Aunt Pat with a note of emphasis in her tone.

“Well, you can’t most always sometimes tell, Miss Patricia,” said Gemmie primly with an offended uplift of her chin.

“And then again you can!” said Aunt Pat happily. “Now, Gemmie, you can wait till Miss Sherry comes back, and then lock up. I’m going to bed.”



Out in the night together Sherrill kept the wheel.

“I’d better drive this time,” she explained as she put her foot on the starter. “It will save time because you don’t know the way. You be ready to spring out as soon as I stop, if the train is coming.”

Sherrill flashed around corners in the dark and pulled up at the station a full two minutes before the train was due.

“I have my ticket, and my baggage is checked in the city,” said Copeland, smiling, “so this two minutes is all to the good.”

He drew her hand within his arm, and they walked slowly up the platform, both conscious of the sweetness of companionship.

“I’m coming back soon,” said Copeland, laying his free hand softly over hers again. “Your aunt said I might.”

“That will be wonderful!” said Sherrill, feeling that it was hard to find words to express her delight. “How soon?”

“Just as soon as I can get a chance!” he said, holding her hand a little closer in his own.

Then they heard the distant sound of the train approaching and had to turn and retrace their steps down the platform.

“I’ll let you know!” he said.

Somehow it took very few words to complete the sweetness of the moment. The train thundered up and they stood there waiting, her arm within his.

“I wish you were going along,” he said suddenly, looking down at her with a smile. “It’s going to be a long lonely journey, and there is a great deal I would like to talk to you about, but we’ll save it for next time.”

The train slowed down to a stop, and the few passengers from up the road came straggling out.

Copeland and Sherrill stood back just a little out of the way till the steps should be passable, and as they looked up, Mrs. Battersea hovered in sight through the car door, coming back from an evening of bridge with some friends in the next suburb.

“Isn’t that your Battledore-and-shuttlecock lady of the reception?” murmured Copeland with a grin.

Sherrill giggled.

“Mrs. Battersea,” she prompted.

“Yes, I thought it was something like that.”

The lady brought her heavy body down the car steps and arrived on the platform a few feet from them.

Copeland stooped a little closer and spoke softly: “What do you say if we give her something to talk about? Do you mind if I kiss you good-bye?”

For answer Sherrill gave him a lovely mischievous smile and lifted her lips to meet his.

Then Mrs. Battersea, the conductor just swinging to the step of the car and waving his signal to the engineer, the platform and all the surroundings, melted away, and heaven and earth touched. The preciousness of that moment Sherrill never would forget. Afterward she remembered that kiss in comparison with some of the passionate half-fierce caresses that Carter used to give, kisses that almost frightened her sometimes with their intensity, and made her unsure of herself, and she knew this reverent kiss was not in the same world with those others.

With that sweet tender kiss, and a pressure of the hand he still held, he left her and swung to the lower step which the conductor had vacated for a higher one as the train rolled out of the station.

He stood there as long as he could see her, and she watched him, drank in the look in his eyes, and suddenly said to her frightened happy heart, “He is dear! Dear! Oh, I love him! I love him! He is no longer a stranger! He is beloved! The Beloved Stranger!”

Then as the train swept past the platform lights into the darkness beyond, with her heart in her happy eyes, she turned, and there stood Mrs. Battersea, her lorgnette up, drinking it all in! Even that last wave of the hand that wafted another caress toward her before he vanished into the darkness!

Sherrill faced her in dismay, coming down to earth again with a thump. Then with a smile she said in a cool little tone, “Oh, Mrs. Battersea! You haven’t your car here. May I take you home?”

And Mrs. Battersea, bursting with curiosity, gushed eagerly, “Oh, Sherrill Cameron, is that really you? Why, how fortunate I am to have met you. I’ve just twisted my ankle badly, and my chauffeur is sick tonight. I expected to take a taxi, but there doesn’t seem to be any.”

Then as she stuffed herself into Sherrill’s little roadster, she asked eagerly, “And who was that attractive man you were seeing off on the train? That couldn’t have been the charming stranger who was at the wedding, could it? Oh—Sherrill! Naughty, naughty! I thought there was a reason for the changes in the wedding plans!”

Sherrill was glad when at last she reached her own room and could shut the door on the world and shut herself in with her own thoughts and memories. But a moment later Gemmie knocked at the door and brought a message from her aunt that she would like to see her for a minute.

Gemmie looked at Sherrill’s lovely red cheeks and smiling lips coldly, distantly. Sherrill felt as if she would like to shake her. But she gave her a brilliant smile and went swiftly to her aunt’s room.

“Well,” said the old lady from among the pillows of her old-fashioned four-poster bed, “I hope you see now that he never stole that necklace!”

“Aunt Pat!” said Sherrill in an indignant, horrified tone. “I never thought he did! I knew he didn’t! But I wanted him to come back to prove to you that he hadn’t! He was my stranger. I knew he wasn’t that kind, but I couldn’t expect other people to realize what he was. I was afraid you would always suspect him if he didn’t come back.”

“Hmm!” said the old lady contemptuously. “I know. You didn’t give me much credit for discernment. Thought you had it all. Now, run along to your bed, child. You’ve had enough for one evening. I just wanted you to know I think he’s all right. Good night!”