The Flower Brides

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “But it’s almost eleven o’clock. You ought to go home at once! I don’t like you running around so late alone.”

  The nurse stared and then laughed.

  “Don’t you know I’ve been used to taking care of myself for thirty years? Don’t you worry about me.”

  “Well, if you’re going to worry about me,” declared Camilla, “then I’m going to worry about you. Come now, please put your hat on and go, and I’ll promise, honor bright, to get into bed the minute the movers are gone.”

  The movers were not long in getting the last load placed. They had their pay and were anxious to get home to their beds. But Miss York managed to stay around until they were gone. She was used to having her way.

  So presently Camilla found herself sinking away to sleep and feeling like a traveler just set sail upon new seas toward strange unexplored lands.

  Chapter 18

  Stephanie Varrell was reading a telegram just received from her lawyer.

  She sat on the end veranda of the hotel that looked off toward the sea, but she did not see the water. On her face was the smile of the cat who has just licked the cream off the pan of milk or the frosting off the sponge cake. The telegram read as follows:

  HAVE OPPORTUNITY TO SELL AT GOOD ADVANCE THE PROPERTY ON VESEY STREET ACQUIRED FOR YOU LAST WEEK AT YOUR SUGGESTION. TENANTS MOVING OUT TODAY. CITY GAS COMPANY OFFERS GREAT INDUCEMENT IF SALE CAN BE COMPLETED AT ONCE. THEY ARE PUTTING UP NEW PLANT IN SAME BLOCK AND WISH TO ACQUIRE THE WHOLE UNBROKEN. THEY ARE TEARING DOWN AND REBUILDING. TIME A FACTOR. CAN GET UNUSUAL PRICE IF YOU ARE WILLING TO SELL. CHANCES ARE THEY WOULD BE ABLE TO GET BUILDING CONDEMNED AND COMMANDEER IT AT THEIR OWN PRICE, IF YOU REFUSE NOW. WIRE INSTRUCTIONS IMMEDIATELY.

  R. R. GLYNDON

  Stephanie read it through several times carefully, the cat-and-cream expression still on her face. Then she took her little gold pencil out of her purse and wrote rapidly on the back of the telegram:

  AM WILLING TO SELL ON CONDITION THE BUILDING IS TORN DOWN AT ONCE, THIS WEEK IF POSSIBLE. OTHERWISE NOTHING DOING. ULTIMATUM!

  S. VARRELL

  When Mr. Glyndon received that message, he smiled, amused.

  “The divine Stephanie must hate somebody pretty badly just now,” he said to himself.

  Stephanie had sent that message on its way and then had left the view of the leaping, dancing, golden sea and searched diligently until she had discovered Jeff’s mother in one of her usual knitting haunts in the windless corner where her carefully sculpted hairdo would not be disturbed. Stephanie dropped down to exclaim over the beauty of the knitting she was doing.

  Madame Wainwright gave her a keen glance and ignored her, and presently Stephanie, in honeyed words, asked about Jeff.

  “He’s having a wonderful time, isn’t he?” she gushed. “They say that trip is great if you can stand the insects and the serpents.”

  “There are a good many kinds of insects—and serpents,” remarked Jeffrey Wainwright’s mother dryly, but gave no further information.

  “But I thought he told me he had to be back in the north before this,” lied Stephanie, with narrowed jacinth eyes on her victim.

  “Perhaps he did,” said Jeffrey’s mother calmly. “He probably changed his plans.”

  “He went with his younger brother, didn’t he? I don’t blame you for being nervous about the little fellow down in an awful place like that, although it must be perfectly fascinating.”

  “He went because he chose to,” said Mrs. Wainwright calmly, beginning to count her stitches. “There was no reason why I should be nervous about Sam. He’s quite capable of looking out for himself, even if there hadn’t been a competent man in charge of the boys.”

  “Then you think Jeffrey may return in time for the tennis tournament Saturday?” cunningly asked the girl. “It would be too bad for him to miss that. He’s practically a champion now, isn’t he?”

  “I really don’t know what my son’s plans are, Miss Varrell,” said Jeffrey’s mother coldly.

  “But at least you don’t think he’ll go back north yet, do you?” persisted the girl.

  “That will depend entirely on whether his father needs him,” said the woman haughtily. “Excuse me, I’ve got to count these stitches again. I think I’ve made a mistake.”

  But Stephanie had found out what she wanted. Jeff hadn’t gone back north yet, that was pretty sure. She had been afraid he had slipped away home already, but she had taken a chance and caught his mother unaware. Women like Mrs. Wainwright could evade, but they didn’t deliberately lie. Jeffrey was still in the South, and if Mr. Glyndon did his duty, there would be no house left on Vesey Street when Jeffrey got back home. She walked to the other end of the veranda and looked off to sea, and her jacinth eyes glinted gold with triumph. She would win out for a few more days anyway, perhaps. She meant to crush that other gold-haired, deep-eyed girl like an eggshell under her foot if she got in her way again. And perhaps the longer Jeff stayed in the forest, the quicker he would forget the other girl and whatever it was she said to him that night they had all met.

  Meantime, there were other pleasant things she could do besides worry over her hates and desires. There were other fish in the sea as good as those that had been caught, or nearly caught, and she was pretty sure that Jeff was safe for a time. Why not enjoy herself?

  So she garbed herself scantily and dropped down to the beach with her best golden lure.

  Twenty-four hours later workmen arrived at 125 Vesey Street and began to roll up the tin roof of the little old shabby house like a scroll; unbrick its wall; pull out its windows like old teeth; and tear up the cheap, worn floors and the two stubby wooden steps where Camilla had stood to say good night to Jeffrey Wainwright the last time she saw him. And surely if intangible things can haunt, the ghost of that kiss he laid upon her lips that night must have fled the neighborhood in utter rout.

  So trifling souls, even those with jacinth eyes, are sometimes used to mold history and change destinies. This time the whims of a spoiled girl with a heart full of hate for anything that came in her way, even unwittingly, decided a much-debated question of whether the city gas company should expand on its south side or on its north side. It was a question of which block they could soonest get possession, and Stephanie Varrell’s cryptic telegram swung the balance.

  Chapter 19

  It was late in the afternoon in camp. The boys had just come in with the fish they had been catching that day, a fine lot of silvery, shining fellows. They were proud of the day’s catch. A certain detachment of the company was cleaning the fish down by the water, and the low-swinging sun made ruby paths across the lake, making the tall pines stand out almost black against the glow. Another detachment was making the fire and getting the mess plates out on the crude table. Still a third was preparing the corn bread; washing lettuce; and getting out the butter, salt, pepper, and other condiments. There was a huge pile of oranges in the center of the table for dessert.

  John Saxon, after giving his orders to the young workers, had swung himself in a hammock stretched between two coconut palms, and Wainwright, more weary with the day’s march than he cared to own, dropped silently into another hammock and lay still with his eyes closed and his arms stretched above his head. He was thinking how good it was merely to lie still, how pleasant the smell of jasmine and the odor of the frying fish that was beginning to mingle with the perfume of the flowers. How hungry he was. He couldn’t remember ever having been as hungry in his life before. It was good to be tired and hungry and to anticipate plain food so eagerly. The very smoke from the pine fire was restful and pleasant.

  If he looked out across the blood-red path on the water there was a strange picture, quiet, restful; the slipping away of the sun so silently. And presently, while they ate, it would be gone without notice, and they would be left to finish by the firelight.

  He opened his eyes now and then and watched the progress downward of the ball of fire that was the sun. There were no gold lights
in it now to remind him of golden hair, but there was a quiet darkness in the shadows of the woods that made him think of her eyes, darkly troubled when she had said she was not of his world.

  What had she meant? The old question back again as soon as he had nothing else to occupy his mind! She was right, too, he was beginning to realize. Before this he had always thought of only one world, with workers to make it go smoothly. Now he saw there were other worlds, each different. Each complete in itself. Yet somehow he suspected that somewhere there must be a point of contact. And it was that point of contact he was out to find.

  He turned his eyes toward John Saxon, lying there in his hammock, one arm swung up over his head, the damp brown curls snapping back from his bronzed forehead, his face so strong and yet so sweet sometimes, and so stern and almost forbidding at other times.

  John Saxon was of another world from him also. Was he perhaps of Camilla’s world? he asked himself. Perhaps. Was there no bridge? No bridge but that strange, inscrutable sentence, “ye must be born again,” that Saxon had read that first night in the woods?

  He lay watching the other man between the half-open lashes of his eyes. He had come to love and admire him during the few days they had been wandering in this strange tropical world together with these kids. Yet always at night when the Bible was read and he heard the strong tender voice in prayer, John Saxon seemed like another man, a man he only half understood. The best part of him seemed hidden behind a mystery that he could not penetrate.

  And why was he so interested in that little worn Testament he carried everywhere, even fishing, and brought out on any occasion? He wished he dared ask him. Somehow he had not yet come to the point where he felt free enough to do so.

  Suddenly Jeff followed an impulse and spoke, quietly, in a voice that could not be heard by the boys at work.

  “John—”

  They had come so far in friendship as to call one another John and Jeff.

  “I wish you’d tell me what it means to be born again.”

  John looked up with a quick light of joy in his eyes, his face kindling with that strange tenderness that Jeff had seen there before several times and wondered at. It was almost as if John had recognized in him a kinship, which he had not before suspected.

  “I guess the best way to understand that,” he said thoughtfully, “is to think what it meant to be born into this world the first time. You did not exist in this world, you know, until you received the life of your parents. Then you were born and became a citizen of this world, gradually growing in the knowledge and privileges of it.”

  Jeff was watching him eagerly, weighing every word.

  “In the same way,” went on John, “you do not exist so far as the spiritual world is concerned until you receive the life of God. Then He says you are born spiritually and can begin to grow in the knowledge and blessings of the spiritual world.”

  Jeffrey was almost breathless with eagerness to grasp every word as he heard again that distinction between “worlds” that Camilla had mentioned.

  He sat up in the hammock and put both feet on the ground, his arms widespread, grasping the meshes of the hammock.

  Then Camilla had not meant just the difference between wealth and poverty, between social position and the lack of it! He had been sure all along that there was a deeper meaning to her words than he understood!

  “How does one receive the life of God?” he asked earnestly, his eyes looking straight into John Saxon’s eyes. “A child in coming into the world has no say in the matter.”

  “No,” said John, “a child of this world is born at the will of its parents, but a child of God is born by willingly accepting the gift of God’s life. To do that you must first realize that you need it—that you are a sinner, helpless to make yourself fit for God’s presence, deserving nothing but His righteous judgment of eternal banishment from Him. If you don’t want that banishment, that separation forever from God, if you do want to be with Him and be like Him, you will accept the gift He offers in undeserved kindness—the gift of eternal life, which He purchased for you by shedding the life-blood of His own Son instead of yours.”

  John’s voice was full of awe and wonder as he added, “He paid that much for me, too!”

  There was silence then for a long minute while Jeffrey studied his friend’s strong face, a trifle puzzled perhaps. He couldn’t quite see what John could have done that should make him so deserving of eternal punishment. His own thoughtless life, filled utterly with his own pleasant self, fulfilling its wishes, nothing very bad, perhaps, but still a life lived apart from God, might deserve punishment, though he had never considered the matter before, having always felt that he was a pretty good sort of fellow as the world went. But John Saxon. What could he have done to feel himself such a sinner that the redemption of himself should bring such awe and adoration into his face? There must be more to this than appeared on the surface, and Jeffrey felt himself to be a babe in this new study in which he had engaged.

  He was about to ask a question about this matter of being such a terrible sinner when you hadn’t done anything much at all, when suddenly the boys came whooping over to announce supper ready and to drag John from his hammock like so many officers of the law. Little Carlin came to Jeff, too, and slid a grubby little skinny paw into his own confidingly, pulling him up and over to the table.

  Jeff put a strong arm around the slender shoulders of the little, loveless child, gave him one of his warmest smiles, and called him “little pard!”

  Jeff was more than usually quiet during the evening. He joined to a certain extent in the games the boys were playing, but John noticed that he was deeply thoughtful, and when at last the camp was quiet for the night, John came and sat down beside Jeff. He was reclining by the fire, gazing deep into the night where a tired late moon was making ragged ripples of silver in the blackness of the lacquered lake.

  “What’s perplexing you, brother?” said John, sliding down beside him cross-legged in the sand and picking up a small stick, which he began to break into tiny splinters and throw one by one upon the fire.

  “I can’t quite see this sin business,” said Jeff, looking up gratefully. “Now, you, I can’t understand that look in your eyes when you spoke of a great price having saved you. You were never a great sinner, I’d wager that! And I, while I’m no gilded saint, of course—I’ve had a good time and not worried much, but I’ve been as good as the average, I’m sure, and a lot better than most. I’ve been clean and fairly unselfish! Where does the sin come in?”

  Then did John Saxon unfold to him the story of sin, beginning in heaven when it was first found in Lucifer, son of the morning, the brightest angel of heaven, when pride made him want to be worshipped like the Most High.

  John took out his flashlight and read snatches here and there from his Bible as he talked, until Jeff heard the whole amazing story of sin in heaven and on earth, causing the fall of man.

  Jeff had never heard it before. Any phrases or references to a devil, or to the fall of man, he had always taken as foolish, whimsical language, and he had never stopped to question what might have been their origin. He listened with deep attention, asking now and then a question.

  “And since then,” finished John, “everyone is born with a dead spiritual nature and cannot see the kingdom of God until he is born again.”

  It was very still all around except for the snapping of the flickering fire and the far call of some night bird. Presently, John took up the story again, of the love of God for fallen man, and told in clear, descriptive words of the shedding of blood that was necessary to satisfy God’s justice and vindicate his righteousness.

  “There you have the story,” he said. “It’s not lying and stealing and murder, nor even uncleanness that makes us sinners. Those are only the result of our being sinners. It’s turning away from a love like that! But a sinner can be made righteous in the sight of God by accepting Christ’s death as his own. Do you understand now how we are all sinners a
nd have come short of the glory which God intended for us when He made us?”

  “I think I do!” said Jeff reverently, slowly, sorrowfully. “I never saw that before. I’ve been greatly guilty. I’ve lived utterly for myself—cleanly, morally, cheerfully, kindly, perhaps, but utterly forgetful of God. I think you’ve led me to what I came out to these woods to find. I knew there was something I had to find before I went back.”

  “Praise the Lord!” said John softly.

  A little later the two bowed their heads beside the fire and prayed together. Perhaps the angels on the ramparts of heaven whispered together, “Behold he prayeth!”

  Chapter 20

  It had been snowing hard all day, white, heavy flakes, and when Camilla came downstairs from the office she paused in the doorway in dismay. She hadn’t realized that the snow would be so deep. She was glad she had worn galoshes, although she had hesitated about doing so, for when she started from home there seemed to be only a few lazy flakes and she thought the storm would not last.

  She stood there a minute wondering if she kept close to the buildings whether the snow was deep enough to get inside her galoshes, and then just as she was about to plunge in she heard a step behind her and a hand was laid on her arm.

  She turned around, startled, and there stood Mr. Whitlock with his nice protective look, smiling down into her eyes.

  “How are you going to get home?” he asked, as if he were responsible for her welfare.

  “Oh, I have my car around at the garage. It isn’t far,” she answered gallantly.

  “Well, I’ll take you to the garage, then,” he said. “My car is parked just outside here. I knew I wouldn’t be upstairs long, and it’s too stormy to go around much without it. I can’t have you getting pneumonia, you know.” And he gave her another of those pleasant smiles that were so almost possessive.