The Flower Brides

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Diana recognized Helen’s fine strategy in that argument.

  “I? Getting married? Who would I marry, Daddy? There isn’t anybody in the world I would rather be with than you. There isn’t anybody I care for. I’ll promise never to get married if you won’t. I’ll stay with you always. And we’ll have such a happy home!”

  The man’s voice was sharp with almost a hint of sudden pain as he replied. “Diana, stop this nonsense. Get hold of your self-control and put these wild opinions out of your mind. You think you won’t get married now, but you don’t realize that such ideas change—”

  “Oh, Father! Father!” sobbed Diana, feeling the utter futility of what she was trying to do. “Please don’t marry her. If you must marry somebody, get somebody else, not Helen. I know Mother would tell you so if she were here.”

  “That’s enough, Diana!” said the father angrily. “Your mother would be the first one to advise me to marry. In fact, we talked about that once. She did not want me to be lonely—”

  “But not Helen! Oh, not Helen, Father dear!”

  “It is time to end this discussion,” said the father sternly. “I am marrying Helen tomorrow, and we’ll be home the next evening for dinner. By that time I hope you will have some control over your silly feelings and be ready to meet us in the proper manner as a true daughter should do. Till then, good-bye!”

  The receiver hung up with a click, and Diana felt her heart sinking down, down, until it seemed that she could not stand up any longer. Slowly she hung up her receiver and sank down in a chair, feeling as if the worst thing that life could ever bring had happened to her. Her own father, speaking to her in that tone! Utterly refusing to hear her pleading! Determined to bring in this separating element into their lives! It seemed too horrible to be true. Her young, frightened spirit fought and struggled within itself, rebelling utterly against what had happened.

  Suddenly she heard the sound of the dining room door opening from the butler’s pantry, and she knew Maggie must be coming. Swiftly, silently she rose and flew up the stairs. She did not want Maggie asking her questions. Not yet. She would have to tell her, of course, if this awful thing were really true, but not yet—not until—well, at least until she could think it out and get some degree of composure. Not until she had given her father time to think over how cruel he had been. Not until there was no more chance that he would call her up again and say he would come home and talk it over. Oh, something, something would surely happen to change the terrible fear into calm and peace again. It could not be that such a horrible happening could come to her, Diana Disston! It had been so hard to lose her mother, to try to get along for life with Mother gone. She had thought that she would never be able to take an interest in life again after her mother was gone. She thought that she had suffered the ultimate sorrow when death came; but now she saw there was something infinitely worse than death, and her young heart gazed into her future appalled.

  But a peremptory tap on the door interrupted her sorrowful meditations. Maggie announced that the milkman had come for his money. “And what’s for dinner the night, Miss Diana? We’ll need ta be gettin’ the orders, especially if your father is comin’ the day.”

  Diana suddenly revived from her seclusion, summoned the self-control that had been the habit of her life before others, and answered, though with a somewhat shaky voice: “Yes, Maggie, I’ll give you the money. Just a minute. And I’ll be down very soon about the orders.”

  Maggie was a canny woman. She heard the shaky voice, and she peered keenly at Diana as the girl opened the door a crack to hand out the money.

  “You’d best come at once,” she said shortly. “We’ll not get the best cuts o’ the meat if we don’t get our orders in soon.”

  “All right,” said Diana, drawing a deep breath and trying to sound cheerful. She went to the washstand and dashed cold water over her face to erase the signs of tears.

  In a few minutes she was downstairs trying to wear a nonchalant air, but the canny old servant saw through her subterfuge.

  “Father won’t be home today.” Diana spoke slowly, steadily, as if she were addressing her own soul. “He—won’t be here till—Wednesday night—!”

  But suddenly her lip quivered, and without warning the tears brimmed over and rolled down her cheeks. She turned instantly away from the room and stared hard out the window, trying to hide her tears from Maggie. But it was too late. Maggie had known her since she was a child. She could not be deceived when something was troubling her bairn.

  “There, there, child!” she said in sudden tenderness. “You’re not ta grieve because of a couppla days. The day and the day’s day will pass that quick you’ll not meet it before it’s gone.”

  But the sound of sympathy completely broke Diana’s self-control, and she put her head down on the window seat and gave herself over to weeping for the moment. Then suddenly she gained control again and raised her head, fiercely brushing away the tears.

  “Oh, but Maggie, you don’t know the half,” she said with a long, shuddering sob that shook her whole young frame. “Father’s going to be married again, Maggie!”

  There was an ominous silence while Maggie took in this new disaster, and a view of her kindly old face would have shown a number of emotions chasing themselves across her countenance like clouds and storm and sunshine across a summer sky. Storm first—a fury of angry clouds that the father of a girl like this and the husband of the wife he had married could be willing to put another in his dead wife’s place; compassion for the girl; then a search for comfort, for sunshine in the dark view.

  “Aw, but perhaps it won’t be so bad, my bonnie dear!” she said pitifully. “Perhaps he’ll bring you a nice, good woman who’ll mother you and make it homelike again. Don’t take it so hard, my dearie. Your father’s a good man. Seems like he would pick a good woman. Look who he picked the first time!”

  Maggie ventured a cheery little rising inflection to her voice.

  But the girl shook her head.

  “No, Maggie, that’s the worst of it. He won’t. Maggie, it’s Cousin Helen Atherton!”

  Maggie’s blue eyes blazed at Diana in amazement, and her cheeks flamed redder than their usual apple red.

  “That hussy!” she exclaimed, her eyes beginning to snap. “You can’t mean it, Miss Diana! Your father wouldn’t do the like o’ that to you!”

  “It’s not his fault!” sobbed Diana. “I know it’s not his fault. He doesn’t understand! He just doesn’t know what she’s like. Helen never did those horrid things when Father was around!”

  Maggie’s eyes held inscrutable thoughts, and her thin lips were pursed incredulously.

  “Mebbe not!” she said in a noncommittal tone, though her eyes belied her tone. “Aw, but these men is that stupid when it comes ta judgin’ a pretty woman, especially if she has a bright way with her and knows how ta work her eyes. Ah! But the poor man’ll rue the day he ever saw her if he ties up ta that hussy! You no think you can try ta tell him, my lamb?”

  “Oh, I have, I have, Maggie! I’ve just been talking to him over the telephone. I’ve begged him to come home and let me tell him everything, Maggie, and he was really very displeased with me. And oh, I don’t know what to do!”

  Maggie suddenly came over to the girl like a little protective hen, every feather bristling, to guard a chick, and laid a work-roughened hand on Diana’s bright bowed head.

  “There, there! You poor little lamb!” she crooned gently.

  Diana suddenly turned and flung her arms around the servant’s neck and put her face on her shoulder, weeping with all her might. For a moment the Scotch woman held her in her arms, her own tears falling upon the girl’s head.

  “There, there!” crooned the woman, patting the heaving shoulders gently. “Mebbe it won’t be so bad as you think! Mebbe your father’ll be able to manage her rampaging ways when he gets to know what she is!”

  “No,” said Diana sadly, “he won’t find out.” There was a hopeless ring
to her voice. “You know what she is, Maggie. You know how she’ll go about it. She’ll tell him everything in her own way and make it appear that it is all my fault. She always did that, and now I won’t have a chance in the world to make him see the truth. She’s begun to pull the wool over his eyes already. She’s told him I wouldn’t want to be at the wedding!”

  “The hussy!” breathed Maggie under her breath. “She would! But he’ll find out, poor man! Give him time an’ he’ll see what a mistake he’s made!”

  “But that’ll be too late!” wailed Diana.

  “Mebbe not. Mebbe you won’t find things so hard. You must just stand up for your rights, child, and not let her get the upper hand. Remember, you’re a woman grown now!”

  “But I haven’t any rights here now, Maggie,” said the little stricken voice of the girl. “She’ll be the mistress here!”

  “You’ve the rights of the daughter of the house!” said the servant grimly. “You mustn’t forget that. You’ll have to let her see that you don’t mean to give up your rights as a daughter in this house. You’ve a right to the same place you had when your own mother was alive!”

  “But I couldn’t stay here, Maggie! Not with her! You know life would be unbearable! You know what she does to everybody around her!”

  “Would you let a thing like her bein’ here drive you out of your own home, Miss Diana? I’m surprised at the way you’re talkin’. You was here first, an’ it’s here you belong!”

  Diana shook her head and lifted a hopeless, tear-stained face.

  “You know I won’t be long when she gets here, Maggie. You know what she’ll do, what she always has done, just put me in the wrong at every turn. No, Maggie, I’ll have to go. It’s probably what she has planned.”

  “Aw, my lamb! I can’t think that! You’ll mebbe make out ta get along for a wee bit while till something turns. And you’ll be gettin’ married soon an’ have a home of your own, you know. She can’t touch you then!”

  “Married!” said Diana bitterly. “Who would I marry? I don’t want to marry anyone, and no one wants to marry me!”

  “Don’t be so sure, child!” said the woman, trying to speak brightly. “There’s many a lad would be glad to if you’d give him half a chance. There’s that young Tommy Watrous that’s been comin’ of late; what’s the matter of him? He’s well fixed, and what would he come for if he’s not thinkin’ of askin’ you, my lamb?”

  “Oh, Maggie!” cried Diana with a little shiver of dislike. “He’s got a mouth like a fish! Would you want to wish any such fate on me as to marry him?”

  “Well, child, he’s not the only one. There’s young Arthur McWade. I hear he’s doin’ very well in the law, an’ he certainly is a fine, upstanding man. He ’minds me of your father sometimes, he’s that grave and quiet.”

  “Yes,” said Diana with asperity, “he’s like an old man, and he’s awfully set in his ways.”

  “But mebbe it’s a good way, child, and he seems dependable. But then there’s that Bobby Watkins. He seemed that disappointed when you weren’t home last week. They do say he’ll inherit his uncle’s estate, and there’s none better in these parts. He’s that cheerful and witty, you must admit that, dear child.”

  Diana turned wearily away. “Oh, don’t let’s talk about marrying now, Maggie; I’m not wanting to get married. Not now, anyway. Marrying makes a lot of trouble. Oh, Maggie! How can I bear it?”

  But suddenly the grocery boy arrived at the kitchen door with an order that had been given the day before, and Maggie had to answer his knock. Diana made a quick escape up the back stairs to her room again, and Maggie wisely left her alone for a little while.

  But the interval, and the opportunity to speak her heart to another human being, had helped Diana so that she could face her immediate problems more sanely. And there was her father’s request about putting away her mother’s things! She must attend to it at once and get it over. It would be the hardest thing she had to do. She turned with swift steps and crossed the hall to her father’s room, the room that had been her mother’s also through all the years. How terrible it was going to be to have Cousin Helen have the right to be there in her mother’s place! Her heart contracted with a sickening thud as she stood in the doorway looking across at the lovely portrait of her mother by Sargent that her father had had hung there where he could look at it in his first waking moments.

  And now he was willing to have it stored away out of sight! Oh, what had Cousin Helen been able to do with him already! Ah, she would wind him around her slender little finger and give that amused smile to his tortured daughter, and that would be all!

  Diana went and stood beneath the portrait and looked up into the calm, serene eyes.

  “Oh Mother, Mother, Mother,” she sobbed softly. “Do you know what is happening to Father and me? Do you know? And don’t you care anymore? Is everything so wonderful where you are now that you don’t care anymore? Or perhaps in heaven you can see so much more and understand so much more widely than we do down here that it doesn’t seem as dreadful to you as it does to me. Oh, but Mother, I know you understand how I feel—”

  Diana raised her arms and lifted the frame from its hanging, holding it close in her arms and looking into the painted eyes with tender yearning, her own brimming over until the tears splashed down the length of the portrait. She laid the painting down upon the bed and tenderly dabbed the tears away from it, as if their saltiness had been a desecration.

  Then came the pain of the thought of putting the picture away out of sight. Must she? How could her father be willing to put her precious mother’s picture away out of his room and his life, that picture of which he had been so proud, which had seemed to be such a comfort to him in the early days of his bereavement? But then, what should make him willing to bring another—and such another—into his beloved’s place? Well, it was all a terrible mystery that she could not solve.

  She wondered if she dared to hang the picture in her own room. How she would love to have it there, and very likely her father would love to have it there, also. It was the natural place for it now, of course. Then suddenly there came a rush of memories. The broken doll; a fragile cup lying in fragments on the hearth where Helen had thrown it in pettishness because she had spilled some of its contents on her hand and scalded it; a precious book that her mother treasured and loved to read, slashed from start to finish, every page disfigured, and Helen’s only explanation: “Because I didn’t like it! Because it was a silly book. It was too goody-goody!”

  In sudden terror, Diana took the picture in her arms once more and carried it to her own room. If she should leave that picture around and Helen should take a dislike to it she would not hesitate to take a carving knife and slash its painted canvas as she had done the pages of her Mother’s devotional book. Diana’s face grew hard. Her eyes flashed. That should never happen! She would do something with the picture to make it safe.

  Swiftly she went to work, laying a sheet of cardboard from among her drawing materials over the painted surface, soft cotton above that, and then wrapping the whole thing in a big old quilt and tying it securely. And where should she hide it that it could not be found? She pondered the question anxiously as she went back to the big pleasant room across the hall that had been her father and mother’s all her young life. How empty it looked now with Mother’s picture gone. The blank space on the wall seemed to reproach her as she entered and looked around, bringing bitter tears to her eyes again.

  But there was need that she act quickly. There was much to be done, and now her work began to assume proportions that she had not realized at first.

  She hid the picture back in the dark end of her closet with garment bags hanging in front of it. That would do for the present, though she was by no means satisfied with its safety. Then she went to work in good earnest, gathering out the precious things from her father’s room until she was satisfied there was not a thing left to remind of her mother. She was standing in the doorway surveyi
ng the finished work. There was not even an embroidered bureau scarf nor a delicate satin pincushion to speak of the former occupant. Then suddenly she was aware of Maggie standing grimly behind her in the hall holding a broom and a dustcloth in her hands.

  “I’ll just finish redding up now,” she said with an air of authority. “You get you to your room and rest yourself awhile.”

  Maggie’s sandy eyelashes were wet with recently shed tears, and her lips were set thinly, defiantly, but she would do her duty to the end.

  Diana turned with a start.

  “Oh, thank you, Maggie,” she said wearily, “that will help a lot. But I can’t lie down now, I’ve a lot to do. I’ve other things to—” she hesitated ashamedly and added, “put away.”

  “Yes,” assented Maggie, “you can’t be too careful. Mind your mother’s pearls! And her brooch! The diamond brooch.”

  Diana gave her a startled look.

  “Oh!” she gasped sorrowfully. “Yes, of course. I hadn’t thought.”

  “She’ll be after the pearls,” the old servant commented sagaciously. “I mind her coaxin’ your mommy once ta let her wear ’em.”

  “She never did let her have them?” Diana asked the question half fearfully, as if she would discover a precedent that might give her courage.

  “Not she!” said Maggie. “She knew her well, that Helen. The pearls would never have come back if she’d once got her hand on them.”

  Diana hurried away and hunted up a little chamois jewel bag in which she deposited the precious jewels, strung it on a slender chain around her neck, and dropped it inside her dress. Then with a light of battle in her eyes, she went through the house to cull out and gather into safety all precious things for which she feared.

  There were a few fine paintings that had been her mother’s delight, small ones done by good artists. There were some bits of statuary, a few pieces of carved ivory and crystal. They were curios associated especially with her mother. Her father would not think of them nor notice their absence if they were gone, but they might incite the new mistress of the house to destroy them if she at all suspected that they were precious to either Diana or her mother.