By the Way of the Silverthorns

by Grace Livingston Hill

  McRae Silverthorn lay on the bed filled with wrathy indignation and for an instant couldn’t get her brain to function rightly. Her dress, her lovely dress! To have it defamed by that girl’s touch! To have it handled and discussed, and tried on perhaps! She could not bear it! She would not! But what could she do? Minnie, when she started out to do a thing, generally succeeded in doing it, all the more when she saw it was distasteful to someone. Rae knew Minnie had always been jealous of her friendship with Sydney.

  Suddenly she heart the bolt of the bathroom slide back with a snap and the door was opened a crack.

  “How old is your brother?” Minnie asked through the crack.

  Rae’s mouth twinkled with quick amusement, but she put on a lazy voice as she answered, “How old? Oh, a few years older than I am!”

  “And he picked out a dress for you? Well, he must have a girl somewhere who works in a store and he hired her to do it. No man has that good taste!”

  Then she slammed the door shut again and shot the bolt.

  By this time Rae was on her feet, her eyes blazing angrily.

  “I won’t stand it!” she said to herself. “I won’t!”

  Then she went into action. Softly she opened the bureau drawers and swept into a bundle the neat piles of garments she had just laid in them so carefully. She stepped to the closet, opening the door most cautiously. She opened her suitcase quietly and laid the garments in swiftly and noiselessly, and then as soon as she heard the water beginning to run in the tub she slipped that taffeta dress of its silken hanger, and onto the hanger in her new suitcase. Then the other dresses, a pastel pink sports dress, a skirt and sweater and white silk blouse, and a little printed silk affair, bright as the springtime. It was the work of but a moment to slip them on the hangers that belonged in the suitcase, to smooth down the skirts, and press the spring that folded them neatly and safely into place! Then her slippers, another pair of shoes. There wouldn’t be anything safe if Minnie got started being disagreeable, and she had seen Minnie disagreeable several times in her life. She surveyed the closet carefully, conscious that the moments were going by rapidly. The water had stopped running in the bathroom. Minnie might appear on the scene at any moment now if she suspected in the least what was going on.

  Rae took off her robe and folded it hastily, sweeping her comb and brush in at the last. She snapped the suitcase shut, locking it, and slipped the key into her handbag that lay on the bureau.

  Then very noiselessly and swiftly she slid into her dress that she had worn when arriving, put on her hat and jacket, slipped over to the door with her suitcase and set it outside in the hall.

  While she had been working she had been thinking, evolving a plan that would be perfectly natural, and yet foil her enemy.

  She gave one swift glance about the room to see if she had left anything behind, a regretful glance because she had anticipated a quiet hour or two by herself to read in that pleasant luxury. Then she closed the door silently and gathering up her suitcase when tiptoe down the velvet shod stairs.

  A glance through the dining room door showed Thelma arranging dishes on the long table, placing forks and spoons and knives. Could she possibly get out the front door without being seen? Hardly!

  Swiftly she walked over to the dining room door and spoke in a subdued tone.

  “Thelma,” she said, “I’ve just remembered something I didn’t give to mother, and I’m going to run over to Aunt Harriet’s and give it to her. I’ve plenty of time. It won’t take an hour. I’ll be back as soon as Sydney is. And Thelma,” she added on second thought, “did you know Minnie Lazarelle is upstairs? She’s taking a bath in my bathroom now, and I slipped out. She doesn’t know I’ve gone!”

  “The huzzy!” said Thelma with a vexed look. “Miss Sydney will be that angry! Isn’t she the limit! I had the new maid take her up to the old nursery. Now what’ll I do? I better telephone the madam.”

  “Yes,” said Rae with a knowing smile. “Meantime I’m going. Don’t worry about me. I’ll take any place that’s left if that’s any easier for you, Thelma.”

  “Bless your heart, Miss Rae, yer like sunshine on a dark day. But you mustn’t’ carry yer own suitcase. Why don’t ye leave it here? I’ll put it away safe.”

  “No, I need it, Thelma, to carry some things, and it isn’t the least heavy. Nothing much in it. Now, I’m going!” and Rae slipped out and shut the door quickly, hurrying to the corner to catch the next bus to her aunt’s house, her whole being trembling with excitement.

  And now she had to think what she should do next.

  It was true what she had told Thelma that she had just remembered something she had meant to give her mother. It was a fine little handkerchief that had been forgotten and she had tucked into her own suitcase. But it wasn’t necessary. Well, she would stop on the way and get her mother—what should she get her mother? Some flowers perhaps? And what should she tell of the reason why she had come all the way over to the north side of the city? She would have to think that out as best she could on the way.

  Chapter 2

  The ushers were getting ready for the dinner. They were housed in the home of Paul Redfern, one of their number, whose family were traveling abroad, and who was keeping bachelor’s hall with a couple of servants to keep things in order. There was plenty of space and they were having a grand time scattered through three or four palatial rooms, shouting conversation back and forth. They were all friends, three of them having gone to the same college, and the rest had been more or less intimate friends childhood. For the bridegroom from afar had left the matter of ushers to his bride as the simplest way of solving the problem, since all of his friends were on the west coast.

  “Say, fellas, you’d better begin to rustle yourselves into battle array pretty quick! We ought to be starting in half an hour,” called Paul, who as host had suddenly become aware of the time.

  “You don’t say! Is it that late?” said Reeves Leighton, starting up from a sleepy hollow chair into which he had dropped when he came in. “What unearthly hour is this dinner anyway? Man, do you know what time it is?”

  “Sure I know,” said Paul, “and the dinner’s at six thirty. That’s not an unearthly hour. We have rehearsal in the church at eight, and they particularly asked us to be on time, because rehearsals always take forever and a day, and Mrs. Hollis said she wanted Sydney to get to sleep early so she would be all right for tomorrow. Syd hasn’t been very well lately, and her mother’s worried about her.”

  “Yes, I guess she’s been going a pretty fast pace the last month or two,” said Steve Grant. “I see her everywhere I go. It beats me why when a girl gets engaged everybody in the neighborhood has to begin to torment her with parties and things. Say, we’re going to miss that gal a lot when she goes away.”

  “Yes, Steve, you ought to have thought of that before. Why ever did you let a strange bridegroom from afar capture her?”

  “I did my best,” said Steve jauntily with a handsome grin. “I couldn’t help it, could I, if she preferred the stranger from afar to my manly beauty?”

  “Sure you could have helped it, Stevie,” teased Paul Redfern. “You never fail to get what you want, do you? The trouble was you were indolent. You should have begun sooner, and made hay while the sun shone! If we hadn’t counted on you to keep Syd in this part of the country some of the rest of us might have got going in time to save her!”

  “Well, at that I hear she’s doing rather well for herself,” said Curlin Grant with a comical grin. “A million dollars is not to be sneezed at, and everybody knows you can’t scare up one of those from any of us poor country guys.”

  Then the doorbell was heard in the distance, and they all came to attention.

  “That’s bound to be Link!” said Paul. “He’s always right on the dot for time. Lincoln Silverthorn is a hound for doing everything on the dotted line. But that means, fellas, that we’ve got to hustle!”

  “But where’s Luther Waite?” they called out as
they scattered in search of their various garments.

  “Oh, have you forgotten? ‘Luther Waite, he’s always late’?” yelled out Steve as he made a dash for the room that had been assigned him. “He’ll turn up after we’re seated at the table. That’s Lute.”

  “Or maybe as we’re marching up the aisle,” added Curlin under his breath.

  Lincoln Silverthorn came upstairs gloved, overcoated, his hat in his hand to see how near ready they were. He stood in the hall where he could get a fairly good view of each of the four rooms where the young men were hurrying into their garments.

  “Hello, Link! Early as usual I see!”

  “Late as usual, I see,” said Link grinning.

  “Say, Link, seen anything of Lute Waite?”

  “Ho! You wouldn’t expect those two to meet up with each other, not beforehand, anyway!” called out Curlin comically.

  “No,” said Link. “I haven’t seen him. In fact I wasn’t looking for him. It wouldn’t occur to me to expect him so soon.”

  But while they were laughing at that the doorbell rang again and Luther Waite came pounding up the stairs, his hat in his hand, his hair awry, and a look of distress on his face.

  “Hi, there, Lute, you aren’t ill or anything are you, appearing on the scene so early?” called Steve wickedly, leaning over the stair railing.

  “No, I’m not yet,” said Luther panting as he hurried up, “but I don’t know but I’m gonna be! Say, Link, you ought ta know, who are the girls in this show? Do you know them all?”

  Link smiled at his serious face.

  “Why, yes, I guess I can name them all. There’s Frannie Ferrin, Lou McHale—you know her, Lutie. Then there’s Carey Carewe, Patricia Nicholson, and Betty Patterson and Sue Richards—those I don’t know so well—and my sister Rae!”

  A look of relief passed over your Waite’s face.

  “Is that all? Are you sure?” he asked anxiously.

  “Isn’t that enough?” groaned Reeves Leighton. “Just think of all those girls, and we don’t know which one we get yet,” said Reeves.

  “Calm yourself, brother,” said Paul. “They’re all a pretty decent lot if you ask me. I should think one might manage a little thing like walking down the aisle with any one of them. It isn’t as if it was to last for a lifetime. What’s eating you, Waite? You look all worried and jittery.”

  Waite dropped down on the top step of the stairs and leaned back against the stair railing.

  “Well, you see, I’ve had a shock!” he said with a heavy sigh of relief. “I was waiting for my bus to come along, and the bus came from the other direction, and who should I sight but that goofy cousin of Sydney Hollis’, that girl they call ‘Min’ something, and I thought if she was going to be one of the wedding party I was going to beat it! They’d be sure to put her with me. I am always a sucker for the leftovers that nobody else wants, but this would be the third time in the last year or so that I’ve served in that capacity, and I’m not up to it again. I just can’t take it! You know it’s not merely a matter of walking down the aisle with her, Paul my friend, it’s the matter of a whole evening more or less, generally more. She’s the kind that freezes onto you fast in the course of the amble down the aisle, and boy! I defy you to get away from her again while the ceremony lasts! And even after, she has ways of hinting that she wants you to take her places the next day and the next week and so on. The first time I met her it took me a week to make her forget me so she couldn’t reach me by telephone. And the next time it was all winter I hadta keep dodging her.”

  Luther Waite had a mop of deep mahogany curls, and gray eyes that had a hint of brown in them. He was rugged, with a lean face and build and a peppering of freckles across the bridge of a nice nose.

  “But look her, Lutie,” said Reeves Leighton, “didn’t you know that the lady in question had moved far away to the west and isn’t in these parts at all? You must have been imagining!”

  “Imagining? Me? I tell you I saw her with my own eyes, and I don’t imagine things. I got the very lowest marks always in school for anything that required an imagination, like a composition. I never had any imagination at all! No sir! Boy, I saw that baby, and she was burrowing in her hand bag for change to pay her bus fare, just like she used to do. No, sir, I wasn’t imagining. It was too lifelike. Believe me I dashed across the street and took the first bus I saw going the other way, and I’ve just got back. I meant to be here an hour ago. I really did. But you know how it was, fellas. I hadta get calm before I could think what to do. And I almost went back to my office and decided to telephone I had been taken with typhoid or smallpox or something and couldn’t come at all. But finally I thought I’d come and see if you fellas knew whether she was in the procession. If she was I was gonta beat it again so fast you wouldn’t know I had been here.”

  He broke off and bowed his head in his hands, his whole big frame stooping dejectedly.

  Then they all came by and gave him a good pounding on his broad shoulders.

  “Get up, Lutie!” they shouted. “Can’t you see how you’re hindering us all? Get up and put your marcel in order. It’s streaming out all over the place. Powder your nose, wipe the tears away from your eyes, and cheer up! We won’t let old Min bother the poor little fellow! Not that we’re not sympathetic, you know, for we’ve all had our taste of Cousin Min Lazarelle, but don’t be worried any more. Min is far far away, and can’t spoil the joy of the evening for you any more!”

  They pulled Waite up on his feet and sat him down in one of the hall chairs, and then they told him to hurry, that it was time to start to the dinner and they mustn’t be late.

  He sat for a moment staring at them sadly.

  “But I saw her!” he reiterated. “I sure did!”

  “Okay,” they cried, laughing. “We’ll protect you! Get up and navigate. We’ll ask Mrs. Hollis to put you beside that cute little McHale number, Lou McHale. Now, brush your marcel and come along!”

  And so at last they were on their way.

  But as they piled into the big Redfern limousine, Link, in the back seat with Reeves Leighton, heart Lute Waite say in an uneasy undertone to Curlin Grant:

  “Say, Curly, you don’t suppose Syd’s mother could have made her invite Minnie Lazarelle to the wedding, do you? Because I know I saw her! And if she’s here I tell you I won’t go near the place. She gets my goat!”

  Link leaned forward and said distinctly, so they all could hear:

  “You’re all haywire, Waite. Just last night Syd was talking to my sister over the phone and she said she was thankful that this was one time her would-be cousin wouldn’t walk in unexpectedly. So I’m sure she’s not invited. But what’s the matter with that baby anyway? I never had any experience with her. I never took particular notice of her. Is she fierce-looking? Has she got a wooden leg or halitosis, or is she just a fool?”

  “She’s just a clinging vine, my lad,” said Reeves Leighton amusedly. “Once stuck with her you can’t get rid of her by any rule that ever was tried. Short of throwing pepper in her eyes and running away I can’t think of anything that would work. She’s one of those girls who has been made to believe that a girl’s chief business in life is to acquire a man, and she means to make good and not let a chance run by her.”

  “I’ll say she does!” said Luther sighing deeply.

  “Hey! Quit that sighing!” said Link giving the big red head a shaking. “You act as if you were going to a funeral instead of a wedding. Snap out of it or they will all think you were in love with the bride!”

  “I was!” said Lutie. “Definitely! Ever since we used to slide down the cellar door together when we were kids. I never thought this could happen that she would select somebody else in my place and go off to California.” Waite got out his handkerchief and pretended to weep, while they all roared with laughter.

  “Between losing Syd, and that vision I had of her cousin Min, I’m a wreck!” he announced with a well-simulated sob, mopping his face despairingly.


  “There she is, Lutie!” called out Steve suddenly. “That’s Min down there by that next corner, isn’t it? That woman with the green coat and the small sized wedding cake for a hat? Or isn’t it? I’m positive she must be it. You’d better hide, Lutie. Put your head down under this coat, and we’ll hide you!”

  Waite crowded his big shoulders down, and allowed them to cover his bulk with the coat.

  “Hey, there! You’re mussing his marcel!” cried out Curlin. “He won’t be fit to be seen when he gets there!”

  “I don’t want to be seen!” wailed Lutie. “I just know Min has come here for the wedding, and if she has she’ll get me. There’s nothing I can do about it! I’m depending on you, Link, to protect me!”

  They rollicked and bantered all the way from the Redfern house to the Hollis place, for all the world as if they were children, and not grown young men with a serious outlook on life.

  Arrived at the Hollis home they marched gravely up the steps and waited with charming dignity and only a few covert grins. When the door was opened, they left their coats and hats in the commodious coat room to the right of the hall door, and then filed into the reception room with the easy familiarity of old friends of the family.

  A ripple of laughter from upstairs made it plain that the girls were already on the scene.

  “That’s Carey Carewe’s musical giggle,” asserted Luther Waite with relief in his voice. “Now, if I can only get next to her the day will be saved!”

  “It’s night, not day, fella! You’ve mixed your signals! Take it calmly, Waite. A few more hours and it will all be over!” advised Paul Redfern gravely.

  Upstairs Mrs. Hollis, attired in black lace and smiling composure, about to go down to meet her guests, had just been informed of the presence of Minnie Lazarelle. She retired hastily to the back hall to tap at the nursery door and have a talk with her.

  “Oh, my dear Minnie!” she said in a shocked tone as the door opened readily and the smiling and triumphant face of the uninvited guest appeared, nothing daunted.