The Flower Brides

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Mrs. Wainwright looked up when she had finished counting her stitches and studied Stephanie up and down, much as Stephanie might have looked at another whom she considered beneath her notice, and then said coldly, “My son is away today.”

  “Oh really!” said Stephanie in well-assumed surprise. “He didn’t mention any such thing last night when I talked with him. Could you tell me when you expect him back?”

  “I couldn’t say,” said Jeffrey’s mother, her voice still colder and more disapproving. “He may be away several days or even longer. He wasn’t sure when he left!”

  “Oh!” said Stephanie, a pretty dismay in her voice but with a mean gleam in her jacinth eyes. “He—hasn’t gone back north yet, has he? Oh, I hope not.”

  Again Mrs. Wainwright favored her with another cool scrutiny.

  “Well, not yet!” she admitted with a slight shrug of her shoulders. “But, of course, he’s liable to be called back almost any time. You’d better not base any of your plans on his movements, for he’s a very uncertain quantity at present.” And she turned with a haughty little laugh addressed to her two friends, as if the unsought interview was now terminated.

  Stephanie stood wistfully for a moment, posing in the attitude of bewildered disappointment, and then with a narrowing of her jacinth eyes and a slight, almost imperceptible shrug of her own pretty shoulders, she walked away.

  She went to the farthest corner of the hotel patio she could find, which was on the sea side, and stared out into the sparkling blue for a few minutes, her thoughts growing more intense as her slender brows drew into a deep frown. Then she rose hastily and made her way to the telephone booths, calling up her lawyer in New York.

  She had to wait a long time before he could be located, but at last she heard his voice, and she spoke haughtily. “Mr. Glyndon, I want you to go out and purchase a piece of real estate for me! I want it no matter what it costs, and I want the matter attended to today. I want to get it without fail at once, and you needn’t wait to communicate with me and tell me it isn’t worth buying at any price, for I know that now. But it’s worth anything to me, anything I have to pay. I have private reasons for wanting it, and I don’t care whether it is a good buy or not. Do you get me?”

  Mr. Glyndon got her. He had had dealings with her before and knew what to expect unless he did her bidding. “Where is the property?”

  Stephanie gave him the address that had been on Jeff’s letter that she had burned in her ashtray. “And listen, Mr. Glyndon, there are tenants in that house, and I want them to vacate immediately. Offer them any kind of a bonus you have to get out at once. I want the house vacant by the end of the week. See? Even if you have to move them.”

  Mr. Glyndon tried to protest, but Stephanie was firm.

  “It isn’t as if it wasn’t my own money, Mr. Glyndon,” reminded Stephanie, “nor as if I didn’t have enough to do what I want with it. Buy it today, please, and telegraph me tonight how you came out. But you’ve got to come out, understand? Good-bye, Mr. Glyndon.”

  Stephanie left the telephone booth with a gleam of danger to somebody in her jacinth eyes and, donning her most daring bathing suit, went down to the beach to captivate some new and interesting admirer in the interim.

  When Mr. Whitlock got back to the office Monday morning a new Marietta was already there, her typewriter burnished for action, a large, neat pile of finished typing lying in regular order on the end of her desk, and she herself seated at work upon some routine typing that was always on hand to fill in between special work.

  She looked up as he entered, and he looked her straight in the face but did not know her. He stood there staring for a second, hesitating, about to ask her what she was doing there, when Camilla came in from the cloakroom and handed her a paper. “There it is, Marietta. I must have dropped it in the closet Saturday.”

  Then Camilla saw Mr. Whitlock and gave him a pleasant good morning, almost breaking down with laughter at the astonished look on his face. His expression fully repaid her for her hard work in getting Marietta into shape.

  He smiled with that nice light in his eyes when he spoke to Camilla, and then he turned back to Marietta.

  “Ah, Miss Pratt,” he said pleasantly, “I see you have been acting on some of my suggestions. And I’m glad to see you’ve got the work done. That’s going to help out a lot, for I’ve got a busy day before me, and I want those letters to get off at once.”

  A little later he came over to Camilla’s desk, and after giving her several directions about the work that morning, he said in a low tone that could not be heard over Marietta’s industrious clicking, “Good work! I’m delighted! I didn’t think it could be done!”

  Camilla smiled understandingly.

  At noon he sent Marietta out for her lunch, and when she was gone he said to Camilla, “How about a little relaxation tomorrow night after all your strenuous labors?”

  She turned around quickly and met that engaging smile again.

  “I have tickets for the symphony concert, and I thought perhaps you’d enjoy going. Could you arrange to get someone to stay with your mother for the evening?”

  Camilla’s eyes sparkled. She hadn’t heard any real music in so long. “Oh, I’d love it! I’ll try. Can I tell you tomorrow morning? I’d have to call up a friend, and I’m not sure I can get her till tonight.”

  “Oh, certainly,” said Whitlock, and in a moment more he went out of the office.

  Camilla went to her concert, and Miss York came and stayed with her mother. It proved a pleasant evening for them all, and Camilla went about for days humming bits of melody that she loved. Whitlock had been delightful company, proving to have a fair knowledge of music himself, at least enough for intelligent appreciation. Camilla enjoyed the concert, although it must be confessed that her thoughts were a bit distracted when she happened to look toward the boxes and the elite circle where the social leaders sat. The beautiful women, their sumptuous dresses, the flash of a jewel, the deferential bend of an escort’s head to his lady’s word, all brought back the memory of that one poor little entry of hers into the great world of wealth and stabbed her with the sharpness of pain to remember certain thrilling incidents that had been treasured and that she thought she had buried too deep for return. Yet here they were again, rearing their heads and mocking at her. Little phrases of Jeffrey Wainwright’s, the way he held her coat for her, the way he bent to listen to her slightest word. Just foolish nothings that had no meaning, and yet they haunted her memory and would not give her peace even here in this wonderful music hall amid such heavenly surroundings.

  She was thankful that she did not have to do much talking. The music made that impossible, and she could close her eyes to all else and just listen.

  During the intermission they went out to walk in the green room, and Whitlock pointed out some notable musicians among the throng. It was all very pleasant, only Camilla could not keep her mind from that other outing and that other escort who had made such a happy time for her.

  She roused herself to be entertaining and succeeded in bringing a goodly number of those intimate smiles to the face of her employer.

  The next day was a busy one, and Whitlock was away on business. Camilla was sorry not to have the opportunity of again telling him how much she had enjoyed the evening but glad in a way to have the time to think it over unhindered by his personality, which, while very pleasant, sometimes troubled her a little by its very possessiveness. It might be good for her resolves to have someone absorbing her time, but somehow it tortured a certain kind of loyalty in her, which she could not forget. Not that she was in love with anybody, of course, she told herself, only that she didn’t want her thoughts to be “all mixed up,” as she expressed it.

  Chapter 16

  Marietta was going along nicely, learning some new principle every day, and really doing credit to her teacher, whom she still adored. Camilla went home that night feeling that she had earned a pleasant, quiet evening with her mother and was
planning to tell her all about the concert and the different people she had seen, who they were, what they wore, and how they looked.

  But the moment she entered the house she felt somehow that something had happened, and when she saw her mother’s gentle face, with traces of tears on her carefully wiped eyes and that look of covert anxiety, she knew that it had.

  “What is it, Mother?” she cried, aghast. “You are not feeling sick again, are you?”

  “Oh no, dear.” Her mother managed a smile. “I’m feeling fine!”

  “Then it doesn’t matter what else happens,” said Camilla with a breath of relief. “Go on, tell me what it is!”

  “Oh, it really doesn’t matter, dear! It isn’t anything very terrible, and, of course, it’s all in the Father’s will, somehow. It’s only that we’ve got to leave this house! Right away! This week, I guess!”

  “But we can’t!” said Camilla, aghast. “They couldn’t do that to us! We have our lease. The year isn’t up yet. They can’t put us out!”

  “No, dear, perhaps not, but I guess we’ve got to go, anyway. You see, the house is sold—”

  “But the lease provides for that very possibility,” said Camilla insistently. “I’ll ask Mr. Whitlock about it. I’m sure they can’t put us out.”

  “But you see, dear—it makes a great difference to them, and they have offered to move us and give us a bonus if we’ll get out this week!”

  “How much?” demanded Camilla, her firm little lips set in a thin line of resistance.

  “Well, it’s a good deal, dear. You see, I told them it was impossible, and they kept on offering more and more until the man said he would refund all the past nine months’ rent since we moved in. I really hadn’t the conscience to keep on saying no, so I told him we would think it over and let him know in the morning. But he seemed to think there would be other ways of getting us out that we might not like so well if we turned it down, so I really think we better go, dear!”

  “But how can we? This week?” said Camilla in consternation, sitting down weakly on a kitchen chair.

  “There’ll be a way, dear, if we are meant to go,” said her mother, smiling. “Come, let’s eat our supper now, and then afterward we can talk it over. You can’t tell what you can do until you try.”

  “This week!” said Camilla again. “How can we? Why, Mother, I can’t possibly get off work to hunt a house until Saturday. Not that Mr. Whitlock wouldn’t let me off if I would ask him, for he’s very kind, but I couldn’t be spared, I really couldn’t. There is so much to be done!”

  “Well,” said her mother thoughtfully, “then I guess I’ll have to hunt a house.” She laughed. “You know, this isn’t the most ideal place to live after all, and it isn’t in the least likely we shall ever have an offer like this one again, nine months’ rent back and our moving free! I thought perhaps we ought to try to get out tonight, lest he should change his mind by morning.”

  “It is wonderful, isn’t it, Mother? It doesn’t seem real,” said Camilla thoughtfully. “And, of course, we have wanted to get away from this noisy little street before spring comes, but to have it sprung at us this way, I don’t see how we’re going to manage! If it were only spring, we could jump in the car and drive around and look up something.”

  “There are papers,” said her mother hopefully. “I bought two off the little fellow next door who sells them. I’ve been looking through the For Rents, and I’ve marked several. There are some that look very promising.”

  “How much?” asked Camilla practically.

  “Why, they don’t give the price,” said the mother, looking troubled, “but several said ‘low price’ or ‘reasonable’ and some of them sounded very nice indeed. There was one, a flat, that looked interesting, and two bungalows out on the edge of town. That wouldn’t be bad for summer, if it wasn’t too long a drive for you.”

  “There are so many things to consider,” said Camilla, her eyes full of new trouble, and she sighed.

  “If we only had more time!” she said. “Where are those papers? Perhaps there are some advertisements we could telephone about.”

  “Yes, a couple gave numbers. But let’s wait till we have finished the dishes and go at it quietly. You mustn’t get all tired and excited after your hard day at the office.”

  “Oh, I’m not tired,” said Camilla. “It wasn’t an especially hard day. And anybody would be excited to have to move overnight, as it were. What day did he say we must be out?”

  “He gave us a week at the outside before he ‘took other measures’, as he put it, but offered fifty dollars more for every day short of that.”

  Camilla looked at her, startled.

  “Well, at least we could afford to pay a little higher rent than we are paying here, then! And things aren’t quite so high now as they were when we moved here. That back rent would pay off the doctor and Miss York, too, and we could start fresh. That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?”

  “Why, of course!” said her mother cheerfully. “Here, you put the things away in the refrigerator, and I’ll wash the dishes. Then we can get to work. It occurred to me to telephone Miss York. She gets about so much, she might hear of something.”

  “I would hate to bother her till we are located,” said Camilla proudly.

  “That wouldn’t be bothering her. She might just happen to know of something. Child, that’s pride, and there isn’t a bit of sense to it!”

  “All right, Mother! Now, go in the other room and get your papers while I put the dishes away.”

  “Well,” said her mother meekly, “all right, only I telephoned Miss York this afternoon, and she’s coming over this evening to talk it over with us. I thought she had a right to know in a crisis like this. She’s been so interested in us and was so lovely when I was sick.”

  Camilla laughed with a relieved note.

  “Well, I’m glad she’s coming,” she owned, “and it will be fun to tell her we can pay her everything.”

  “Be careful,” said her mother, “don’t talk too much about pay. She’s been just lovely, and you mustn’t hurt her.”

  “No, I won’t, Mother dear,” said Camilla, stooping to snatch a kiss as she passed with her hands full of plates and cups, “only it will be so good to feel that the debts are paid! But what about the woman upstairs? She hasn’t paid us for three weeks, do you realize that? Maybe we’ll have trouble with her.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Chrystie with the air of a child confessing her faults one by one, “I’ve fixed that all up with her. I told her that if she would move out tomorrow we would let the back rent go, and she’s gone out to her married daughter’s now to find out if she can have a room there for the rest of the winter. It seems she’s lost her job and doesn’t know when she can pay, so I think she was really relieved.”

  “But perhaps she’s got a disagreeable son-in-law who won’t have her,” suggested Camilla.

  “No, she says he’s very nice and has often asked her to come there and live, but she likes to be independent.”

  “Well, that’s a help, anyway. Because even if we stayed here and she didn’t pay her rent, what would we have done?”

  “Yes, I know,” said the mother thoughtfully.

  “But, Mother, even if we had a place to go, it might take several days to get a mover. They have to be engaged beforehand.”

  There was a wise twinkle in her mother’s eye in answer to that.

  “No, you see, I thought of that, and I asked Mrs. Pryor next door if she knew of a good mover. She told me of one right in the next street. She’s known him a long time and says he’s very honest and careful, so I telephoned him; he came over at noon and looked over what we have and said he could move it after five o’clock any day this week, tomorrow if we found a place!”

  “Tomorrow!” gasped Camilla. “That would be utterly impossible!”

  “I don’t see why, Camilla,” said Mrs. Chrystie calmly. “I’ve thought it all out, and I can’t see wasting the offer of fifty dol
lars a day. Why, Camilla, if the house was on fire, we’d get out on the sidewalk inside of half an hour, and we’d probably save a good part of our things at that. And surely with a good mover we could do it in a day! And it doesn’t seem reasonable for us to lose fifty dollars a day wasting time looking for a house. We can surely find something right away.”

  “But, Mother, how do you know that fifty dollars a day is a genuine offer? The man may be a fraud and just trying to get us out of the house and home for his own interest. I think we ought to find out more about it before we do anything about hunting a house.”

  “Well,” said her mother with another twinkle, “you know, I thought that, too, so I called up the bank and asked Mr. Baker, and it seems the man is a noted lawyer and anything he says he’ll make good. He offered to put the money in our bank in Mr. Baker’s hands to be delivered to us as soon as we moved.”

  Suddenly Camilla sat down and looked at her mother with new respect, and then she began to laugh.

  “Well, Mother,” she said with admiration, “it seems you are able to run our affairs better than I am, and here I was counting myself the manager of the family! Why, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to do all those things, and you’ve got everything practically arranged.”

  “Yes,” said the mother, smiling, “your father taught me to be very careful about such matters, and staying here all day alone, I had time to think it all out. But you’re not to discount your own ability, Camilla. I’ve been proud of you, managing everything so well while I was sick. And I’ve been glad just to lie back and have everything fixed for me. But I still can do my share occasionally when it’s necessary, and I thought today, till you came back, it was necessary to act at once, so I acted.”

  “Well, Mother, what else have you done?”

  “Oh, not much else, except to call up one or two real estate offices and get a list of houses and apartments for rent. Silcox around on Tenth Street sent a boy around with a list of places with descriptions and prices. I told him about what we could pay. Of course, some of them were more than I said. But you can look them over. You’ll know locations better than I. I thought Miss York could help in that also. Three agents told me of apartments and gave me descriptions over the telephone. So, you see, I’ve been busy. The lists are over on the desk, and there are three places that can be seen this evening!”