The Flower Brides

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Wainwright carried her through the intricacies of ordering with the skill of a connoisseur and then sat back quietly with a pleased smile, his eyes meeting hers with a sweet intimacy that thrilled her.

  “I’m glad Aunt Fan and Uncle Warren were here. They’re grand old sports. I was proud to have them meet you,” he said happily.

  Camilla felt a glow of pleasure. He was not ashamed of her, then. And, of course, a young man took different girls out to dinner. There was nothing so very personal in being taken out to dinner, she must remember that. She was just one of his friends, at least for tonight.

  “And now, Camilla,” he said, watching the lovely expression of her eyes as she lifted them to his, “don’t you think it is about time you began calling me Jeffrey? I’ve been calling you by your first name right along, and you slide around impersonally without calling me anything.”

  Camilla answered him with a level gaze, smiling a little, thinking rapidly. Was this going to take her too far? Nonsense! She could be sensible and friendly with him as well as with the boys who had grown up with her at home. God’s standards did not include primness.

  “After a man has slept in your own hall in an old Morris chair,” she giggled to herself, “and carried down an army cot and a down comforter in his shirt sleeves, it is really absurd to stand on ceremony with him.” And then she said steadily, with a friendly smile, “All right, Jeffrey, if you like.”

  The waiter came back then and handed Wainwright a menu card, saying something to him in an unintelligible tone. Wainwright looked at the card then looked up at Camilla.

  “We didn’t order anything to drink,” he said. “What wines will you have? Champagne?”

  Bang! Down came something hard and icy into her heart, knocking her faint and dizzy. He drank then. Of course! All fashionable society drank. One read of it on every hand, but she hadn’t thought of that as one of the questions she would have to meet tonight. Somehow she hadn’t connected it with Jeffrey Wainwright!

  Camilla came from a long line of Prohibition ancestors, reaching away back before the Civil War time. Her principles were ingrained in her very nature, and here suddenly was a terrible reminder of the wide gulf that was fixed between her world and his.

  Even while she heard her own voice, clear and quiet, saying, “No wine, thank you!” she felt her heart sinking down, down, and down, and her very lips grew white.

  She knew he wouldn’t understand her feelings. She didn’t intend he should ever know how she was feeling, but she suddenly knew in her own heart that, in spite of all her careful warnings of herself, here she was thinking so much of this dear, bright, handsome fellow across from her, that it was like a knife in her heart to know of this gulf between herself and him. And it wasn’t as if it was anything that could be bridged over, either, like ill manners or poor taste in clothes or lack of culture. It was something that had to do with moral standards, and it wouldn’t be right for her to change, and it wasn’t in the least likely that he ever would.

  She heard him quietly dismissing the thought.

  “No wine, waiter.” Just as if it had been butter or soup he was talking about. He did not question her decision nor seem surprised. He did not order any for himself. He was a perfect gentleman. He just went on quietly talking as if nothing at all cataclysmic had happened. She was so thankful for that.

  And yet he must have seen her sudden quietness. Could he guess how she felt?

  He did not offer her cigarettes. She was glad of that. She noticed now that many women all around them were smoking. Yet he did not smoke himself. She wondered if that was just his politeness. He surely was not different from his world. And this was his world. She could never have realized it so definitely if she had not come here with him tonight.

  He studied her quietly, with pleasant eyes, talked easily of music, books, and lovely things that she knew and enjoyed, and presently her color came back and a portion of her pleasure, but the light was gone from her eyes, and he missed it. He was trying to understand just what had happened.

  But he did not talk about it. He put her at ease again. He began telling her about different people in the room, who and what they were. There was a famous broker from Wall Street. Across at the next table was a great oil magnate. That woman with the Titian hair and emeralds was a noted actress. Her companion was a famous artist. Just across the room were three authors. Those three women down the room to the right were daughters of multimillionaires whose names were known all over the world.

  Camilla studied them all and grew more and more silent, troubled, almost. The gulf between her and her handsome, courteous playmate was widening minute by minute. When she went out of this room and went home it would be the end, a sort of sweet dream that turned into a nightmare. And she cared! Oh, shame! Camilla cared so much! And it wasn’t his fault. He had been perfectly nice and friendly and impersonal. Oh, he hadn’t an idea what he was doing to her little trembling, unsophisticated self. And the worst of it was she had had plenty of warning in her own soul.

  Oh, she would get over it by and by, of course. She had to. But now, tonight, it hurt so! If she only could have had this one whole evening unspoiled. But, of course, it had to be this way or she would have gone on getting deeper all the time into an acquaintance that did not, should not, belong in her life.

  They were waiting for the dessert now, and she had grown very silent. She saw the great room in a blur. She watched the figures of men and women dancing a little way down the room where there was a clearer space. The women were beautifully gowned. Most of them had no backs to their dresses. They sparkled with jewels, though many dancers were just in street clothes like her own. Her eyes followed them, scarcely seeing them, quiet, troubled.

  He thought how very lovely she was and tried to break the spell of quietness that had come over her, to find out what were her thoughts, her lovely thoughts behind his flowers that she wore so well. It was then he asked her if she would like to dance.

  “No, thank you,” she said and seemed to shrink as she lifted her honest eyes to his. “No, I don’t dance. Oh, I oughtn’t to have come here!” There was almost a cry in her tone, although it was very low. No one else could have heard it.

  “You see,” she tried to explain, “I don’t belong to your world! I ought to have stayed in my own. I knew it. It is not just a difference in clothes, not only a difference between rich and poor. It is that we belong to different worlds!”

  “That isn’t so!” he said earnestly. “Anyone can see at a glance that you are to the manor born—the way you walk, your tone of voice, the way you carry yourself, like an empress. There is grace in every movement, refinement in everything you do and say. I will not admit that we are of different worlds.”

  Camilla looked at him thoughtfully.

  “I’ll admit,” she said slowly, “that my people were educated, refined, and used to having cultured friends and lovely things around them, but it isn’t just a matter of that. Yes, I was well born even as the world reckons, but it’s more than that. It’s a matter of standards.” She hesitated, and her golden lashes went low upon her flushed cheeks. “It’s a matter of beliefs—and of literally different worlds. You see—I’ve been born again!”

  He stared at her for an instant in a kind of consternation. He did not know what she meant. He wanted to understand, but what she said conveyed nothing to him. Born again!

  Just then there was a disturbance over by the door. Some new people were coming in, a bit noisily for the formality of the stately place, and all eyes were turning toward the door. The music had died away at the end of a lovely number, and there was a sudden silence that brought every eye around to see what was happening.

  Camilla, too, turned her eyes to the door, and Jeffrey Wainwright looked also and gave a startled exclamation, a very low one, but audible enough for Camilla to hear.

  Among the little knot of new arrivals at the doorway, two people stood out. A dark, frowning young man with an arrogant manner and a
n imperious glance and a girl with gold hair and jacinth eyes. A girl in black velvet, cut high in the front and low in the back, a gorgeous string of large pearls around her neck. She had just taken off a marvelous ermine cape that reached to the floor and handed it to her escort, and there she stood, staring over the room with hurrying, piercing eyes, looking for someone. She was wearing orchids, too, but they were green ones, strange, weird wraiths like gnomes of flowers, and Camilla watched her, startled.

  The man who was with her was searching the room, too, with unhappy, restless eyes.

  “Look! Your double!” said Myles Meredith to Stephanie. “Where did he rake her up?”

  Stephanie turned her head in the direction he was looking. Her jacinth eyes became stormy, her red mouth, painted to ghastliness, grew sardonic.

  “Come!” she said. “We will go there!” She pointed to a table just vacated, quite near to where Jeffrey Wainwright and Camilla sat. And suddenly Camilla knew that this was the worst moment of all.

  They came straight on, those two, with their eyes on her escort, and Camilla, giving him a quick, fleeting look, saw that he had regained his poise and his quiet grace.

  “Hello, Jeff!” said Stephanie, nodding to Wainwright carelessly. She turned her head slowly toward Camilla and gave her a stare of contempt then swept on, giving Wainwright no chance to make the introduction he had intended.

  Wainwright followed her with an astonished glance and then turned deliberately away. Camilla could see that he was deeply annoyed, but he did not glance again at those other two.

  “It’s just as well,” he said in a low tone to Camilla. “I shouldn’t care to introduce that man to anyone. Shall we go, Camilla?”

  Camilla rose and managed somehow to get herself out of that place. She was somewhat reassured by the visions of herself in those many mirrors all around. They startled her, they looked so much like the other girl. She could feel the other girl’s eyes upon her as she went. She could feel the fire and the hate in her glance; yet she knew she maintained her own poise. She owed that to her escort.

  “And now,” said Wainwright when they were out of it all and waiting for the car, “what shall we do next? Would you like to hear some more music, or would you enjoy a good ice hockey game at the arena? We’ll be in plenty of time for the second game, and there are some exhibition skaters there tonight.”

  “Oh!” said Camilla, breathless, “oughtn’t we to go home? Isn’t it very late?”

  “No, it’s early yet. Aren’t you having a good time, Camilla? You aren’t tired yet, are you?”

  He looked down at her with his charming smile, and Camilla looked up with another. She couldn’t help it. There was something in his smile that melted down all her fortifications.

  “No, I’m not tired,” said Camilla, struggling to find words that were true. “It’s been—wonderful!”

  “Well, suppose we go to the arena and get something entirely different, just to freshen us up a bit.”

  All the way to the arena he talked brightly of interesting things. It wasn’t far. He did not touch on what they had been saying when the disturbance occurred. Camilla was grateful to him for that. Somehow she did not want to go back to it. She had a feeling it was a closed incident.

  All through the hockey game and through the solo skating that came between the rounds of the game, he kept her interested and happy. The joy of the first part of the evening had returned, to a certain extent. It was not quite the same; it was a more subdued joy, like the sweetness of a pleasant farewell, but she was grateful for it. It was going to be a pleasant ending to a wonderful experience. She was glad not to have had it end when they left the restaurant after that other girl came in.

  Camilla loved the skating and the hockey game. It filled her with a new interest, and during intermissions Jeffrey told her about the winter sports up at their estate in the mountains. He said he would like to take her there sometime; he knew she would enjoy it. Camilla smiled back at him, just as if she were not sure she would never get there, and said she was sure she would.

  At last the evening was over and he took her home, his gracious, lovely manner just the same, his attractiveness and strength and the flash of his smile, even the way his voice said “Camilla,” were all hers, just as they had been when they started early in the evening. Just as if Camilla didn’t know in her heart that this was the end.

  And he hadn’t yet referred once to what she had said.

  Then, just as Camilla gave him her key to let him unlock the door for her, he took both of her hands in his and pressed them gently.

  “Camilla,” he said, “you’re a great friend, and I’m glad I’ve found you; and someday pretty soon, when we can get time and a quiet place without too many people around, I want to talk more about what you were saying when we were interrupted.”

  And right there on her own doorstep, with all the little, sordid, shabby brick houses up and down the street asleep, and not a soul in sight either way, he suddenly laid his lips on her trembling ones and kissed her.

  “Good night, little girl!”

  He unlocked the door for her and swung it softly open, for they had agreed to be quiet lest they waken her mother, and Camilla said a faltering, little, frightened good night and slipped inside the door, closing it softly behind her.

  He was gone. She could hear his car driving away! And his kiss was burning on her lips!

  Oh, Camilla! Camilla! What had she done? Let him kiss her and said not a word. Yes, and yielded her lips to his!

  It was sweet, but it must be the end! Absolutely the end!

  Chapter 7

  Camilla locked the door silently and stole into the front room, stepping out of her satin shoes at once so that she should not disturb her mother and the nurse, although if she had only known it, both of them were wide awake and had been for the last hour, awaiting her coming. But each for the sake of the other lay quite still. The mother could not sleep because she had gone in imagination through every detail of the evening with her beloved child. She had lain almost without stirring because she did not want the nurse to scold her and give her hot milk or a tablet to make her sleep. She was enjoying every minute of this outing for her daughter who had so little to take her out of the round of hard work.

  The nurse had gone to bed early and lain very quiet for her patient’s sake, but she, too, had been renewing her youth, full of excitement over the beautiful young girl and the man who had not only unusual attraction but wealth and charm besides. It seemed like a real romance to Eleanor York, and she lay there planning it out as if it had been a storybook she was reading.

  So the two left at home were by no means asleep when Camilla came in and went about her preparations for bed with as few movements as possible.

  Perhaps it would have been better for all three if Camilla had frankly wakened them and gushed a little bit about her evening. Certainly it would have taken her own mind from the things that disturbed her.

  But she slid into her bed that stood waiting for her with its covers carefully turned back, flung the covers over her with one movement, and lay rigid, her conscience already beginning to grill her with the details of the evening, hauling out and displaying before her every disturbing element, until she felt like writhing.

  Beginning with that kiss, that sweet, burning kiss that lingered hauntingly upon her lips, her mind traveled backward over each moment she had been away, sensing the preciousness of it all, even while she rejected it as something she must not have for her own.

  Then back again from the moment she had left her home, down through each little thing; how clearly it was impressed upon her mind. Wainwright’s smile, the way his eyes had searched hers when he asked a question, the way their thoughts had seemed to travel together, the way they understood each other, his easy grace as he helped her out of the car and led her to the table, his pleasant compliments. Were they genuine, or did he say those things to every girl? She could not believe they were not genuine, not just for herse
lf alone.

  Ah! But there was that other girl! That girl with the jeweled gold hair and the mocking red lips who had called him “Jeff” and stared at her so insolently! The iron went deep into her soul as she thought of her! And there were all the other things that made up his world: the wine, the dance, and all the carefree frivolity that constituted the difference between his world and hers; the huge gulf fixed that might not be crossed; the gulf between Life and Death, light and darkness, unalterable and eternal. That he would ever accept the Life she possessed seemed as improbable as that a camel should go through the eye of a needle.

  Yet how gentle he had been with her on the way home. Almost as if he understood that something had been a shock to her. Of course, he had blamed it on the way the other girl had acted. He wouldn’t have understood the other even if she tried to tell him. It was a spiritual thing and had to be spiritually discerned.

  Yet he had a wonderfully fine human understanding and sympathy. She felt that instinctively, and she warmed to the remembrance of his manner toward her on the way home, and then—that kiss! If anyone had told her earlier in the day that she would have allowed a young man to kiss her, unrebuked, a strange young man at that, one to whom she had never really been even introduced, she would have been angry indeed. Yet, as the memory of that kiss came back to her, she could not seem to be indignant. It had not been given flippantly nor roughly. It had been reverent. Utterly so. It had not even seemed a liberty. And yet if some other girl had tried to explain such a thing away, Camilla would have curled a lip of scorn at her. No, according to her own confessed standards it was wrong; and yet, when she thought of it, in spite of all her theories and beliefs, even in spite of facts, she felt as if that kiss had been a sort of benediction, a tribute laid at the feet of her womanhood. It had been so reverent, so gentle. There had been nothing wanton about it.