The Flower Brides

by Grace Livingston Hill

  There were a few bruises from her accident last night that were developing, but they were trifles, just enough to make her realize how she had been saved from death, or crippling, which might have been worse than death. So her heart sang softly as she went about the little apartment putting everything in as lovely order as it was possible to do with an invalid and a trained nurse to be considered.

  When, at the earnest command of the nurse, she finally lay down in the late afternoon to rest, her mind dwelt on the kind friend who had been sent to help her out in her trouble, and she breathed a little thankful prayer for him, too, and began to try to think of ways she might show him her gratitude.

  The white orchids were in a lovely crystal bowl now, a relic of the prosperous past, and filled the little front room with their distinctive grandeur and loveliness. Camilla gave a thought of wonder to the one for whom they had been originally intended. Was she a girl he loved? Or a woman he honored? His mother, perhaps?

  No, it would not have been his mother. He distinctly said the occasion for the flowers had passed and he didn’t know what to do with them. Mothers were always there, if they were there at all. If his mother was away he would have sent them from the florist’s. No, these flowers had been for a girl. They must have been for a girl, and he had been going to take them to her, take her out somewhere perhaps, or maybe just call upon her.

  Camilla worked it all out carefully in her mind, and looking at the stately flowers, her intuition warned her that she must not let her thoughts get fastened upon this interesting stranger, for he surely must belong to someone else in a world that was not hers.

  Yet those lovely white blossoms haunted her thoughts and tormented her conscience so that she finally got up softly so the nurse would not be disturbed from her nap and moved them into her mother’s room where she could see them if she wakened. They were her orchids, anyway.

  Then she went back to her couch and resolutely put out of her mind all thought of the stranger. He was a dream. She must not think about him.

  It was the next morning while Camilla was carefully giving her mother spoonfuls of orange juice that her mother’s eyes suddenly fastened upon the orchids.

  “Camilla!” she said with a startled note in her feeble voice. “Where did those come from? You didn’t buy them—did you?”

  “Oh, no,” said Camilla, trying to hide her confusion with a low laugh. Fool that she was! Why hadn’t she known her mother would question her about them, and how was she to explain without alarming her? The whole story of the accident and her wild evening ride were wrapped up in the innocent presence of those flowers. White orchids did not bloom on every corner around that shabby little brick house, and, of course, her mother would be keen enough to think it all out and wonder why! Camilla’s mother was a great one to scent alarm.

  “Oh, no, I didn’t buy them,” laughed Camilla, draining the last drop of orange juice from the glass into the spoon. “Imagine me getting reckless enough to spend money on white orchids, of all flowers, this season of the year. No, Mother dear, they were sent to you.”

  “Sent—to me!” said the mother in wonder. “Who would—who that I know, could?” She turned large, troubled eyes on her daughter. It was not easy to put anything over on even a sick mother of Camilla.

  Camilla had been thinking fast.

  “Yes,” she said cheerily, “but you don’t know him. That’s the fun of it. Not yet, that is. Maybe he’ll come around again someday, though, and you can thank him. He is the man who went after the medicine the doctor needed the night you were sick. His name is Wainwright.”

  “Is he one of the men in your office?”

  “Oh, no!” said Camilla with relief. “I don’t really know much about him myself, but he’s very nice and kind. He brought the flowers in from his car after he had been on an errand for the doctor and said perhaps you could enjoy them when you began to get better.”

  Mrs. Chrystie’s face relaxed into a smile.

  “How kind! A stranger!” she said, and she turned and looked at the lovely flowers.

  Then, when Camilla leaned over to kiss her forehead, she smiled again and said, “Dear child! I’ve always wanted things like that—for you!”

  Camilla’s answer was another kiss, and she hurried out of the room. She didn’t want her mother to see her face. She would ask more questions, perhaps, that would be hard to answer, and the daughter felt she would rather wait until her mother was really strong again before she was interrogated about the strange young man who had taken her to a lonely suburb and gone with her into an empty house. All that would be quite against her mother’s code for a respectable girl, and, of course, her mother would not understand how very sick she had been and what the necessity was.

  But the very next day Wainwright arrived in the late afternoon with a luscious basket of fruit.

  Mrs. Chrystie was decidedly better and feeling quite bright. Her ear was keen, and she asked the nurse if that was the young man who had sent her the orchids. The nurse replied that it was.

  “I want to see him!” she demanded with a gleam of real interest in her eyes.

  “I’m afraid it will tire you,” said the nurse hesitantly.

  “Oh, I won’t talk except to thank him. He needn’t stay but a minute!”

  So the nurse stepped into the hall where Camilla was talking to Wainwright in low tones and announced that the invalid wanted to see him for just a second.

  Wainwright eagerly followed her into the sickroom. Camilla, in trepidation, lingered in the doorway, afraid for what he might say.

  But she needn’t have worried. Wainwright knew his way around the world exceedingly well. He gave her mother one of his pleasant grins, said a few graceful phrases, declared he was coming to see her again when she was well enough to talk longer, and took himself away from the house. He seemed to have a fine inner sense that if he lingered around in the kitchen with Camilla, now that her mother was alive to the world again, it might excite her wonder and perhaps make trouble for Camilla.

  Camilla watched him wistfully as he took his leave. What a fine, kindly, friendly person he was! What would it be to have a real friend like him! In spite of the sentinels of caution she had set about her heart to watch her every thought, his brief call had left a warm, happy feeling.

  He called up the next day to say that he was going to be away for a few days and he wanted to ask how Mrs. Chrystie was before he left.

  “Mother has invited some friends to our place up in the mountains, and she seems to think I’ve got to go and help her out,” he explained. “I’m not especially keen on it, though the winter sports are always interesting, but I guess it’s got to be done. Mother sort of depends on me to look after things.”

  Camilla thanked him for calling and felt a flow of pleasure that he had cared to inquire for her mother, reflecting how few of the young men she knew would have taken the trouble, when they had so many other delightful interests, to call up and find out about an elderly woman who was practically a stranger. But she discovered that the world seemed lonelier when she had hung up the receiver, just because she knew he could not be expected to run in anymore.

  “Yes,” she told herself, standing by the tiny kitchen window and looking out on the neighbor’s ash cans where shabby little sparrows fluttered noisily about trying to find a peck or two of crumbs among the trash. “Yes, you’re a fool! Just like other girls! Just because a man has been kind for a few days you let yourself get interested in him! Just because he has an engaging smile. He doesn’t care a pin for you beyond a passing interest, and it wouldn’t do you a smidgen of good if he did, because he is not of your world. You know that, and yet you let yourself miss him. Well, it’s a good thing he’s gone, if you’ve got to be a fool!”

  Nevertheless, when the nurse went out a few days later and brought in the evening paper, Camilla’s eye caught at once among the illustrations on the last page, a large picture of a glorified log cabin flanked by stately pines, looking out o
ver a snowy hillside where young people in smart sports attire were enjoying themselves, some on snowshoes, some on skis, and some skating around the glittering frozen lake in the distance. The caption beneath the picture stated that the Wainwrights were giving a house party at “The Antlers,” their winter estate, and described the various sports available to their guests. Her heart gave a little lurch and her eyes grew wistful as she studied the picture. What fun it would be to be included in such a party! That was his world! He belonged there! Playtime and leisure and plenty of money to carry out whatever whim came into his head. His kindness to her and her mother had only been the carrying out of a very lovely one of his whims, of course, and she certainly had no need to quarrel with that. What might have happened to her mother and herself if he had not been there and been disposed to help?

  There was a figure in the center foreground that suddenly she knew was him as she studied it. It was something about the pose of his tall splendid body, the heavy lock of dark hair that hung over his fine forehead—or was it his smile that flashed out even from those tiny graven lines that identified him?

  He was bending at the back of a long sled, as if to kneel behind a load of girls and young men already seated on the sled at the top of the hill. One hand was on the shoulder of the girl just ahead of him, and she was smiling, as if at something he said.

  Camilla’s heart gave another lurch, this time of envy. Oh, to be a girl on that sled, about to glide down that long white hill, that even a newspaper photo gave hint of its smooth, glittering whiteness and the joviality in the very atmosphere of the shining day. He was going down that hill behind that other laughing girl, and instinctively she knew the girl must feel safe and happy, because he was there looking after her.

  Suddenly Camilla straightened up away from the paper, gave it a quick decided fold that hid the picture, and snapped out into the kitchen to prepare her mother’s broth. Fool! Here she was mooning again over other people’s happiness! It was in another world he walked, and God had given her a way to walk of her own. If He had chosen quiet ways of service and hard work instead of continual playtime, what need had she to complain? He had also given her a faith that upheld her and a hope that she would not surrender for all the world had to offer. And had He not given her back her precious mother from the edge of the grave? God knew best. Whatever He gave was right!

  She smiled a tender little smile, and then she went about the kitchen singing:

  “God’s way is the best way,

  Tho’ I may not see

  Why sorrows and trials

  Oft gather ’round me.

  He ever is seeking

  My gold to refine,

  So humbly I trust Him,

  My Savior divine.

  God’s way is the best way,

  God’s way is the right way,

  I’ll trust in Him always,

  He knoweth the best.”

  The invalid in the other room heard her, and a smile of content grew softly on her lips, peace on her brow.

  The nurse hovering about the patient said, as she patted the pillows into comfortable billows, “You’ve got a wonderful daughter, Mrs. Chrystie.”

  And the mother, with another smile, answered, “Haven’t I?”

  “Yes, there’s many a girl would be fretting over the everyday ills, but she’s taken worry like a soldier.” The nurse had reserve in her tone. She did not say that she knew how much personal deprivation Camilla had taken that she might provide the better for her mother. A nurse grows wise to see the inner workings of a family where she is employed and learns not to seem to see everything.

  The next day Camilla went back to her job in the office.

  It was the nurse who planned it.

  “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t go back,” she said to Camilla. “I haven’t another case for two weeks, and unless an emergency comes in, I really haven’t any cause to go back to my boarding place. I’d just love to stay here with your mother without any pay until I’m called. She’s lovely, and I’d like to be near her. And there really isn’t much to be done for her anymore. In another day or two she’ll be going around as usual. All you want is somebody here to just watch her a little and see that she doesn’t overdo. So if you want to board me for being here with her till I have to go, I’d really like to do it. It’s kind of a solitary place where I board, and I’m sometimes lonesome. Besides, if I’m here I shan’t have to pay my board.”

  Camilla compromised on half-salary to be paid in small installments, as she could, and went thankfully back to her job in the office.

  When Jeffrey Wainwright got back to the city he came by almost immediately and was disappointed to find that Camilla was not at home.

  “She’s gone back to her job,” explained Miss York, as if he would understand what a cause of thanksgiving that would be.

  Wainwright looked perplexed.

  “Job?” he said vaguely and then instantly recovered himself, remembering that to this nurse he was an old friend of Camilla’s who presumably knew all about her affairs. “Oh, yes, job,” he repeated. “Of course she would be expected to, wouldn’t she? I hadn’t realized that her mother was well enough for her to leave yet.”

  “Oh, she had to,” the nurse explained, “or she would have lost it, of course, and in these times jobs aren’t so easy to replace, you know.”

  He didn’t know. He had read about that in the papers, of course, but he didn’t really know, and he stared at her with his nice troubled eyes and floundered about in his thoughts like one who was beyond his depth.

  “But Mrs. Chrystie is better,” went on Miss York, “much, much better. She doesn’t really need me anymore. I’m just staying here for company till I’m called to my next case. Wouldn’t you like to come in and see her? She spoke about you just this morning and wondered if you would ever come to see her again. She did appreciate those orchids so much that you sent her, and she said she never really half thanked you.”

  So Wainwright went in and met Camilla’s mother, clothed now in a simple little gray housedress, silvery like her hair, and quite in her right mind. She was sitting by the window in the Morris chair where Wainwright had once spent the night, darning a tan silk stocking with delicate little stitches, and she welcomed him graciously and with as much poise as his own mother might have welcomed one of her own set.

  So he sat down and talked with her, feeling at home with her at once, she looked so much like a mature Camilla. And Camilla’s mother sweetly and keenly proceeded to find out all about him without letting him know that she was doing so.

  He followed her lead, telling her all about the winter sports and the hunting on the estate. He had brought with him a present of some venison, which he had shot himself, and this made a good opening for the conversation. So when Camilla came in a few minutes earlier than usual and the cross examination was over, Camilla’s mother had a fairly good picture in her mind of the snow-clad hills, the frozen lake, and the whole round of winter sports in which he had been indulging. She had, too, a fairly good idea of the log palace with its huge stone fireplaces, its rustic galleries, its large living room furnished with lavish simplicity, and its almost unlimited capacity for entertaining guests. With her own uncanny perception she had visualized Mrs. Wainwright loftily presiding over the bright throng she had gathered under her wide-spreading roof. A cold, hard, tyrannical, self-centered woman she judged her, just from the few sentences about her that had come from the lips of her son. She had even discovered the name of the great fashionable church with which the house of Wainwright had a vague affiliation, and she had almost as good an idea of Jeffrey Wainwright’s birth and breeding and the influences that had surrounded him during his childhood as if it had been carefully indexed and cataloged for her.

  Camilla came in, all rosy and brisk from the crisp outside air. A few snowflakes were falling outside, and some had lingered on her little brown hat and had melted on her cheeks and taken away the pallor that he remembered before he
went away.

  She had let herself in with her key and came upon them before they were aware. She stood still in astonishment and, with a quick leap of her unconquered heart, saw him talking with her mother. Saw the wonderful smile she remembered so vividly and had tried so hard to forget during the past two weeks. Saw the nice curves of it around his pleasant mouth, the flash of his perfect teeth, the light in his eyes as he became aware of her presence. Something leaped within her that she could not control, a gladness and a thrill that frightened her, it was so adverse to her own careful self-control. This was his charm, the charm of the world. This was the kind of man that made one breathlessly happy just to have him here. And this was dangerous, dangerous to a girl who was a fool like herself, whose heart would make more of the occurrence than it had any right to make.

  There was that in the touch of his hand, too, that took all her practical good sense away, and she had to steady herself to make herself quietly withdraw her hand in a reasonable time.

  “I’m glad to see you again!” he said, and stood holding her hand until she withdrew it, looking down into her eyes.

  She had to think hard to envision that pictured scene on the snowy hillside with the girl on the sled looking adoringly up into his eyes, to make her turn her own away. This was doubtless just his way, the way he spoke and looked at all girls, and he was just calling on a girl he had befriended to see if all was well with her. He was not of her world. She must keep remembering that.

  There was a cool, clear, little edge on her voice as she responded, mindful of his exceeding kindness to a stranger in the street yet not presuming in the least upon the friendliness he had given so lavishly afterward.