The Flower Brides

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “Why yes,” said Camilla, “the dishes are done. Mother, here’s Mr. Whitlock. Miss York, won’t you come in and meet my employer?”

  Camilla was a little startled at herself for calling him that. She had of late avoided calling him anything. He had told her once that his name was Ralph, but he hadn’t made a point of it, and somehow she had hesitated, as if the use of it committed her to something intangible for which she was not quite ready.

  “Miss York?” said Whitlock, with an annoyed frown. “Who is she? What’s she doing here?”

  “Why, she’s a member of our family, that is, when she is not out on her job,” said Camilla, with heightened color. “I guess you haven’t happened to meet her before, have you? She has her room here and comes when she is not on a case.”

  She looked up, and there stood Miss York in the doorway, with Mrs. Chrystie just behind her. “Mr. Whitlock, this is our dear friend, Miss York!”

  Miss York stood for an instant, looking at Whitlock with a sudden startled gleam in her eye as the man rose and faced her with a puzzled frown. Then the nurse spoke.

  “Good evening, Mr. Whitlock. We’ve met before, haven’t we? I’ve heard Camilla speak of her employer, but I hadn’t an idea it was the same Mr. Whitlock.”

  Miss York was entirely at her ease and spoke with assurance. But Whitlock looked at her blankly.

  “Miss—York, did you say? Your—ah—face does seem somewhat familiar, but I’m afraid I—I can’t place you. I see so many people, of course, in the day’s work.”

  “Yes, I suppose you do,” said Miss York pleasantly, “but you’ll remember me when you know who I am. I’m the nurse that took care of your wife when your baby was born. A little girl, wasn’t it, and a very pretty baby if I remember rightly. I know its mother said it was the image of you, and you were as pleased as could be!”

  Mrs. Chrystie gave a soft little exclamation and looked at Whitlock, and Camilla in the shadow of the hall doorway gave a startled glance at her mother and then turned to watch Whitlock, her own face still in shadow.

  Over Whitlock’s face had come a strange and subtle change. Every vestige of color had drained away, leaving him severely gray and tired-looking, yes, and old. Camilla was startled at the change. He seemed fairly haggard. He faced them all with miserable, cold eyes.

  “Yes?” he said in his most official voice. “It seems to me I do recall a nurse. One doesn’t always register faces at a time of crisis.” His voice did not encourage further conversation, but Nurse York seemed not to notice. She gushed on pleasantly.

  “No, I suppose not,” she said. “One wouldn’t be expected to remember a mere nurse at such a time. But do tell me how your wife is. She was such a sweet, dear little woman. I really fell in love with her, and that baby was one of the sweetest I ever saw. Dorothy, wasn’t that her name? Dorothy Rose Whitlock. I remember thinking how well the names went together. I suppose she has grown to be quite a girl by this time, hasn’t she? Is she as pretty as she promised to be? I thought her hair was going to curl.”

  Mr. Whitlock fixed Miss York with a haughty stare and answered in tones so cold it was a wonder that they did not freeze into icicles.

  “Miss York, I have not seen my wife for over five years now. We are separated! And I do not know anything about the child. She is with her mother!”

  “Oh,” chirruped Miss York blithely, “what a pity! I’m sorry I spoke of it.”

  He turned from her abruptly, addressing Camilla quite formally.

  “I came out to see if you would mind letting me run you in to the office for a few minutes. There are a couple of letters that ought to get off tonight. I’m sorry to bother you, but they ought to be typed, and, if you’re willing, why, you can go that much earlier tomorrow, you know.” He tried to finish with a light laugh, but his voice sounded harsh and shaken.

  “Why, of course I’ll be glad to do the letters,” she said heartily, “but you needn’t take the trouble to drive me in to the office. I have my own typewriter here, you know, and it just happens that I brought several extra sheets of the letterhead paper out with me the other night when I brought home some other work to type.”

  Camilla wheeled out the little table containing her machine, drew up her stool that fitted under it so nicely, and was ready for work.

  She could see that Whitlock was not much pleased with the arrangement, but there wasn’t anything he could gracefully do about it, so he dropped into a chair and began to dictate in his most impersonal office voice. Miss York and Mrs. Chrystie drifted back into the kitchen, talking cheerily and moving about putting away things.

  The letters proved to be very commonplace affairs, and Camilla suspected that they were a mere excuse to get her away from the house. It wasn’t, of course, especially pleasant for him to be around Miss York after what had been said, but she typed away rapidly and soon had both letters written, addressed, and sealed.

  “There!” she said brightly. “That was a great deal easier than going away downtown and opening up the office for just those few minutes, wasn’t it?” And she smiled a bright, tense little smile. The very air seemed charged with electricity, but something had been lifted from her heart that made it lighter. She didn’t stop then to question what it was; she only knew that a great relief had come upon her.

  “Yes, that’s very nice,” said Whitlock in a dry tone that did not sound at all as if he thought it nice.

  He took the letters and held them a moment, looking at them. Then, with a glance toward the kitchen where cheerful voices were still to be heard, he lowered his voice and said, “You wouldn’t like to come out for a little drive, would you, Camilla?”

  Camilla’s breath came quickly, but she managed a bright smile.

  “I couldn’t, tonight, really Mr. Whitlock. Miss York can only be here for a short time, and I promised to help her put up her curtains this evening.”

  He stood, looking at her thoughtfully for a moment, his brows drawn in a frown. Then he lowered his voice and stepped nearer to her.

  “Camilla, I want to talk to you. I have something very important to tell you. I really came over partly to tell you tonight.”

  “Why, of course,” said Camilla, feeling her heart suddenly coming up in her throat but trying to seem brightly sympathetic. “We can sit right here and talk. Nobody will bother us. They are busy getting Miss York’s room fixed up. Won’t you take this big chair?” Camilla indicated the most comfortable chair in the room, well in the far corner in the shadow, and dropped into a small straight chair opposite.

  Whitlock’s lips were set in an unpleasant line, but he accepted the chair and sat down rigidly on its edge. He did not speak at once.

  Camilla was holding herself firmly in hand. She found a tendency in her hands to tremble, but she would not let it show.

  “It’s about Marietta, I suppose,” she said, breaking the silence. “Poor Marietta! I had hoped you felt she was doing better. But I suppose it is hard to put up with her.” She felt that she must put off embarrassing topics, if possible.

  “No, it’s not about Marietta,” said the man brusquely. “She’s doing very well, far better than I supposed possible. It’s all due to you, of course, and so long as you are willing to keep her on as a pupil, I’m willing to put up with her. It must be hard on you, but you are most unselfish. Camilla, you are the most unselfish person I know. That is why I have been so attracted to you.”

  “Oh no, I’m not unselfish,” said Camilla quickly. “I’m just sorry for Marietta.” She laughed lightly, hoping to avert further confidences.

  But Whitlock sat gloomily across from her and looked at her, saying brusquely, “Well, it’s not of Marietta I was about to speak. I was going to say that I should have told you long ago of my wife, perhaps. But I was hoping to delay until—something decisive had been done—something in the way of—divorce proceedings. Of course, it is all a very painful topic to me!”

  “Of course!” said Camilla quickly in a sympathetic tone. �
�Please don’t feel you must tell me anything more. I quite understand that it must make you very unhappy to speak of it. I am sure Miss York would not have spoken of it if she had known.”

  Whitlock wasn’t so sure of that, but he did not say so. He paused again painfully and then said, “No, I would rather tell you. Now that you know of her existence, you should know all about her.”

  “I don’t see why, Mr. Whitlock. I am just your secretary. It isn’t customary for businessmen to tell their private affairs to their secretaries.”

  She tried to turn the matter off lightly, but Whitlock persisted in watching her gloomily and went on.

  “You are far more than a secretary, Camilla,” he said feelingly. “You surely know that. You cannot have failed to see that. You must know what a comfort you have been to me in my loneliness—”

  “Oh, Mr. Whitlock!” protested Camilla, deeply troubled by his tone and endeavoring with all her might to refuse to understand his meaning, “I’m glad if I have helped at all. I was only trying to do my duty. One doesn’t know how those around us are suffering, of course.”

  Whitlock gave her a quick, keen glance. Was she really as dull of comprehension as she seemed?

  “You see,” he said, dropping his glance for a moment and placing the tips of his fine long fingers together, “my wife was a spoiled child. That was about the truth of the matter. She was determined to have her own way in everything. She had been petted and humored, and she expected me to do the same by her that her parents had done.”

  Something in the black look that came over his face at the memory gave Camilla a swift revelation of what it might be to live under the domination of this man, who could be so gentle and fascinating when he chose and yet so overbearing when the whim took him. She shuddered at what might have been her fate if she had gone on a little longer. Even if there had been no wife in the future, his nature would have been the same. But aloud she only said, “That was hard for you both!”

  His face hardened at that.

  “It was certainly hard for me!” he said uncompromisingly.

  “It must be very hard when a home is broken up!” moralized Camilla, loathing herself for the smugness of the remark yet unable to think of anything else appropriate to say.

  “Get rid of the idea that she was a martyr,” said Whitlock brusquely. “She had her own way. She’s living with her father in his palatial mansion. She has everything she wants. I am the one that is cast out. I have done everything that I could to make her see where she was wrong and make her come back to her home and her responsibilities, and she has refused. Now I think it is time to think of myself. I have refused to get a divorce, feeling that she might weaken, but my life is going on, and I am alone. There has been no one to understand me, no one to cheer me when I come back from a hard day!”

  He paused a moment, and Camilla gazed at him in troubled silence.

  “Until you came, Camilla—!” His voice softened, and he gave her suddenly one of those deep, possessive looks, those smiles that had puzzled her often before and now filled her with a new kind of alarm.

  “Oh, please,” she said in a distressed tone, “I’m glad if I have helped in any way. But I’m not the one to do anything much. If someone—something—could only bring you two together again! It must be so very hard for all of you. In spite of disagreement, it can’t be happy for any of you to be apart! You belong together! It’s what God wants—expects of you! And—your little girl! How dreadful for her not to have any father and for you not to see her every day and watch her grow up! My father was so much to me. I wouldn’t give up the precious memory I have of him for anything!”

  The man almost squirmed away from her words.

  “Yes, of course, there’s that,” he said almost roughly. “But then, she’s having every luxury, more than I could give her. She isn’t really missing anything. It’s I that am starved for human sympathy—until you came, and—and then I began to feel that there might still be a little brightness left for me on earth if—”

  Suddenly Miss York appeared in the doorway, and her pleasant, hearty voice boomed into the atmosphere so tense and strained, seeming to clear away the morbidness and bring a fresh breath to Camilla. “Well, I just looked in to see whether you two were done with those letters. If you are, I wonder if I could get your help for a minute or two, putting up this awkward old picture. I can’t seem to hang it alone. Mr. Whitlock, you used to be handy around the house, I remember. Would you mind lifting the picture while I twist the wire to shorten it? These ceilings are so low that the cord is too long.”

  Whitlock rose stiffly, severely, and followed the nurse into the room across the hall, doing what was asked of him without a word, his face like a thundercloud all the while, and then when it was done he turned to Camilla.

  “I’ll say good night,” he said stiffly. “I must get these letters into the mail!” (Although Camilla knew quite well those letters weren’t important at all.) “I’ll see you on Monday about the rest!” he added significantly and, taking his hat and coat, departed without a word or even a glance in Miss York’s direction.

  “H’m!” remarked that good woman significantly. “Grumpy as ever, I see!” Then she added, “He had the sweetest little wife I ever saw, and he treated her like the very dust under his feet. I’m not surprised she couldn’t stand it. But I guess he can be nice in the office, can’t he?”

  “Yes, he can be nice,” said Camilla thoughtfully. “He has really been very kind to both of us girls in the office.”

  Miss York eyed her keenly and said no more, and they spent a very happy evening getting Miss York’s room settled, but nothing more was said about Mr. Whitlock.

  Camilla, however, was much disturbed in mind, though she managed an eager interest in Miss York’s room that well covered her troubled thoughts. But when Monday morning came she went down to the office in great trepidation.

  Whitlock, however, gave no sign of anything out of the ordinary. He was gravely courteous and quiet during the morning, with even more than usual of his brusque abstraction. Marietta sensed it at once when she came in and snapped into her work with a frightened vigor that warmed Camilla’s worried soul.

  It was not until noon when Whitlock sent Marietta out for her lunch that he unbent and spoke to Camilla.

  “Now,” he said, looking up with a relaxing of his grim dignity, “I want to talk to you, Camilla. Thank goodness we shan’t be interrupted here, except by the telephone, for nearly an hour.”

  Camilla swung her swivel chair around from her desk, a startled look in her eyes, although she had been quite expecting something all the morning.

  “Move your chair over here near me where you always take dictation. I don’t want to have to talk very loud.”

  Camilla moved her chair to her usual place, innocently carrying her pad and pencil as she usually came for dictation.

  She tried to look up composedly but met one of those possessive glances that had come to seem so frightening.

  “Camilla,” he said, “I have been utterly miserable all night.” His eyes certainly attested to his words. “I haven’t been able to sleep. I have thought and thought until I am nearly crazy. I felt that we should talk it over and decide what we ought to do.”

  “We?” said Camilla, opening her eyes wide in alarm.

  “Yes, Camilla, I felt that you had the right to make the final decision.”

  “Decision? I don’t understand, Mr. Whitlock.”

  “Why, decision as to how we ought to move, you and I. You know, of course, that I have been loving you all winter! And I thought that I had reason to believe that you felt the same way.”

  He reached out his hand and covered hers with a warm, soft, tender grasp. Camilla started out of her chair aghast and drew her hands quickly from under his clasp.

  “Mr. Whitlock!” she exclaimed in no uncertain tones. “You had no right to love me! How could you have thought that I had any such feeling? How dreadful! How perfectly terrible for
you, a married man, to feel that way!”

  There were tears in Camilla’s eyes, and her face was white and drawn. She turned away from the desk and stood over by the mantel.

  But Whitlock got up and came over beside her. “Don’t speak that way, Camilla! Don’t weep. I cannot bear to see you suffer, too. You don’t know how it tears my heart! You little, beautiful, lovely darling. Oh, I love you, love you, love—!”

  “Stop!” cried Camilla. “It is disgusting to me to hear you say that! It is unholy! You humiliate me!”

  “No, Camilla, you mustn’t feel that way, dearest. You don’t know how I love you, how I long—oh, how my hungry arms long to hold you close! Just once, Camilla, let me feel your heart against mine. We have a right to that! Just to put my lips on yours—”

  His arms went out to embrace her, and there was passion in his glance, but suddenly Camilla sprang away from him and went and stood over by the door.

  “Don’t you dare touch me!” she cried, and her eyes flashed fire. “Mr. Whitlock, I didn’t think you were a man like this! I never would have come here to work if I had known that you would dare talk to me like that! My mother would never have invited you to dinner. We thought you were simply being kind to us for the sake of our old friends at home. I thought you respected me!”

  Whitlock stood white and shaken across the room from her, looking at her sternly.

  “You misunderstand me,” he said hoarsely. “I mean you no disrespect. I want to marry you as soon as I can get a divorce. When I said I wanted to discuss the matter with you, I merely meant whether we should go on for a while and keep our love between ourselves or whether I should come out in the open and ask my wife for a divorce. I can easily do that, you know, for it was she who left me.”

  “Mr. Whitlock, I don’t know what you mean, keep our love between ourselves. I have no love for you, and you have no right to love me nor to tell me so. And even if I could ever care for you that way I would never marry a divorced man. It’s not right!”