Beloved Stranger

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Then suddenly she straightened up, marched back to her seat, and took up her plate again. Her eyes were snapping now, and her tone was far from gentle as she said, “But it was far too good a thing to happen to Carter McArthur. He ought to have been tarred and feathered!

  He deserves the scorn of the community! Go on. Tell me the rest! What excuse did he offer?”

  “Oh, he said things about his business. He said he couldn’t marry her; he had to marry influence and money! Aunt Pat, he seemed to think I had money, though I’ve told him I was poor and that you were giving me my wedding. Or else, maybe he was just lying to her; I don’t know—”

  “Well,” said Aunt Pat, setting her lips wryly, “I suppose I’m to blame for that. I thought the thing was inevitable, and I told him myself that you would be pretty well fixed after I was gone. He likely was figuring to borrow money or something.”

  Sherrill’s head dropped again, and she gave a sound like a groan.

  “There, there! Stop that, child!” said the old lady briskly. “He isn’t worth it.”

  “I know it,” moaned Sherrill, “but I’m so ashamed that I loved a man like that!”

  “You didn’t!” said her aunt. “You loved a man you’d made up in your own imagination. Come, tell me the rest, and then eat your supper or you’ll be sick, and then what’ll Mrs. Battersea say?”

  Sherrill gave a hysterical little giggle and, lifting her head, wiped away the tears.

  “Well, then someone came to the door and told him the car was waiting and it was late, and he got frantic. He told her to go away, and then she threatened to kill herself, and suddenly he took her in his arms and kissed her—just the way he used to kiss me, Aunt Pat! Oh, it was awful. His arms went around her as if he was hungry for her! Oh, there was no doubt about how he felt toward her, not a bit! And then he kissed her again and suddenly threw her from him into the corner, turned out the light in the room, and went away slamming the door hard behind him.”

  “The poor fool!” commented Aunt Pat under her breath.

  “I stood quite still holding my breath,” went on Sherrill, “till suddenly I heard her move, and then I reached out and turned on both lights in both rooms and she saw me.”

  “What happened?” The old lady’s eyes were large with interest.

  “I believe I asked her how long she had known him,” said Sherrill wearily, “and she said always, that they had grown up and gone to school together, and then he had sent for her to come here and be his secretary till he could afford to marry her—”

  “A beast! That’s what he is!” murmured Aunt Pat. “A sleek little beast!”

  “She said it was not until I came that he turned away from her. She said awful things to me. She said it was all my fault, that I had everything and she had nothing but him, and I had ruined her life and there was nothing for her to do but kill herself! And when I told her to hush, that there wasn’t much time and we had to do something, she thought I meant that she was to get away quietly so no one would know. She raved, Aunt Pat! She said it was all right for me, that I was going to marry him. And when I told her that of course I couldn’t marry him now, and asked her if she would marry a man like that, she said she’d marry him if she had to go through hell with him!”

  Aunt Pat’s face hardened, though there was a mist across her eyes which she brushed impatiently away.

  “Poor little fool!” she commented.

  “So I dragged her into my room and made her put on my dress and veil. I guess that is all. She couldn’t believe me at first. She said she couldn’t do that, that he would kill her, but I told her to tell him that if he didn’t treat her right, if he didn’t go through the evening in the conventional way, or if he tried to throw it up to her afterward, then I would tell the whole world what he had done.”

  “Great work!” breathed Aunt Pat. “Sherry, you certainly had your head about you! And you certainly seemed to know your man better than I thought you did.”

  “Oh, Aunt Pat, it seems so awful for me to be sitting here talking about Carter when just a few hours before I thought he was so wonderful!”

  “Yes, I know!” mused Aunt Pat with a faraway look. “I had that experience, too, once, ages ago before you were born.”

  “You did?” Sherrill looked up with wonder in her eyes.

  “Yes,” said Aunt Pat with a strangely tender look on her face, “I did. I was engaged to a young hypocrite once, and thought he was the angel Gabriel till I got my eyes open. Sometime I’ll tell you about it. There isn’t anybody living now who knows the story but myself. I thought I was heartbroken forever, and when my grandmother told me that he just wasn’t the man God had meant for me, and that He probably had somebody a great deal better waiting somewhere, I got very angry at her. But that turned out to be true, too, and I did have another lover who was a real man later. It wasn’t his fault that we never married. Nor mine either. He died saving a little child’s life. But the memory of him has been better for me all my life than if I’d married that first little selfish whiffet. So don’t let yourself think that the end of the world has come, Sherrill.”

  Sherrill sat looking at the old lady and trying to reconstruct her ideas of her, wondering at the mellowing and sharpness that were combined in her dear whimsical old face.

  “There, now, child, you’ve told enough!” said the old lady briskly. “Eat your supper and go to bed. Tomorrow you may tell me about everything else. We’ve had enough for tonight. I’ll talk while you eat now. What do you want to do next? Go to Europe?”

  “Oh, not Europe!” Sherrill shrank visibly.

  “Of course not!” snapped the old lady with triumph in her eyes. “We’ll go someplace a great deal more interesting.”

  “I don’t think I want to go anywhere,” said Sherrill sadly. “I guess I had better just stay here and let people see I’m not moping. That is, if I can get away with it.”

  “Of course you can!” lilted the old lady. “We’ll have the time of our lives. They’ll see!”

  “The only place I’d want to go anyway would be out west by and by, back to my teaching. I’d like to earn money enough to pay you for this awful wedding, Aunt Pat!”

  “Stuff and nonsense!” fumed the old lady. “If you mention that again, I’ll disinherit you! You hurt me, Sherrill!”

  “Oh, forgive me, Aunt Pat! But you’ve been so wonderful!”

  “Well, that’s no way to reward me. Go away when I’m just congratulating myself that I’ve got you all to myself for a while. Of course I don’t fool myself into thinking I can keep you always. You’re too good looking for that. And there are a few real men left in the world even in this age. They are not all Carter McArthurs. But at least let me have the comfort of your companionship until one comes along!”

  “You dear Aunt Pat!”

  “There’s another thing we’ve got to consider tomorrow,” said the old lady meditatively. “What are you going to do with those wedding presents?”

  Sherrill lifted her face, aghast at the thought.

  “Oh, mercy! I never thought about them. How terrible! What could one do?”

  “Oh, send most of them back. Send Carter those his friends sent. Don’t bother about it tonight. We’ll work it out. You run along to bed now, and don’t think another thing about it.”

  Ten minutes later Sherrill was back in her own room.

  Gemmie had been there and removed every trace and suggestion of wedding from the place. Sherrill’s best old dresses hung in the closet; Sherrill’s old dependable brushes and things were on the bureau. It might have been the night before she ever met Carter McArthur as far as her surroundings suggested.

  She cast a quick look of relief about her and went forward to the mirror and stood there, looking into her own eyes, just as she had done when she was ready for her marriage. Looked at her real self and tried to make it seem true that this awful thing had happened to her, Sherrill Cameron! And then suddenly her eyes wandered away from the deep sorrowful thou
ghts that she found in her mirrored eyes, with an unthinking glance at her slim white neck, and she started. Why! Where was her emerald necklace? She hadn’t taken it off when she put on her robe. She was sure she had not. She would have remembered undoing the intricate old clasp!

  Frantically she searched her bureau drawers. Had Gemmie taken it away? Surely not. She went to the little secret drawer where she usually kept her valuable trinkets. Ah! There was the box it had come in! And yes, the ring and bracelets were there! She remembered taking them off. But not the necklace! Where could the necklace be? Perhaps it had come unfastened and dropped in the big chair while she was eating her supper!

  She stepped across the hall quickly and tapped at the door of her aunt’s room.

  “Aunt Pat, may I come in a minute?” she called, and upon receiving permission she burst into the room excitedly: “Aunt Pat! I’ve lost my emerald necklace! Could I have dropped it in your room?”

  Chapter 7

  For a moment Sherrill and Aunt Pat stood facing one another, taking in the full significance of the loss from every side. Sherrill knew just how much that necklace was prized in the family. Aunt Pat had told her the story of its purchase at a fabulous price by an ancestor who had bought it from royalty for his young bride. It had come down to Aunt Pat and been treasured by her and kept most preciously. Rare emeralds, of master workmanship in their cutting and exquisite setting! Sherrill stood appalled, aghast, facing the possibility that it was hopelessly gone.

  “Oh, Aunt Pat!” she moaned. “You oughtn’t to have given it to me! I—I’m—not fit—to have anything rare! Either man or treasure!” she added with a great sob, her lips trembling. “It—seems—I—can’t—keep—anything!”

  Aunt Pat broke into a roguish grin.

  “I hope you didn’t call that man rare, Sherrill Cameron!” she chuckled. “And for sweet pity’s sake, if you ever do find a real man, don’t put him on a level with mere jewels! Now, take that look off your face and use your head a little. Where did you have that necklace last? You wore it this evening, I know, for I noticed with great satisfaction that you were not wearing that ornate trinket your would-be bridegroom gave you.”

  “Oh, I thought I had it on when I came in here!” groaned Sherrill. “I just can’t remember! I’m sure I didn’t take it off anywhere! At least I can’t remember doing it.”

  She rushed suddenly to the big chair where she had been sitting for the last hour and pulled out the cushions frantically, running her hands down in the folds of the upholstery, but discovering nothing but a lost pair of scissors.

  She turned on the overhead lights and got down on her knees, searching earnestly, but there was no green translucent gleam of emeralds.

  Meanwhile Aunt Pat stood thinking, a canny look in her old eyes.

  “Now look here, Sherrill,” she said suddenly, whirling round upon the frantic girl, “you haven’t lost your soul, you know, and we are still alive and well. Emeralds are just emeralds after all. Get some poise! Get up off that floor and go quietly downstairs! Look just casually wherever you remember to have been. Just walk over the same places. Don’t do any wild pawing around; just merely look in the obvious places. Don’t make a noise, and don’t say anything to the servants if any of them are up. I don’t think they are. Gemmie thought they were gone to bed. I just sent Gemmie away. Then, if you don’t find it, come up to me.”

  Sherrill made a little dismal moan.

  “Oh, for mercy’s sake!” said Aunt Pat impatiently. “It isn’t as if you hadn’t had a chance to wear them once anyway, and one doesn’t wear emeralds, such emeralds, around every day. You won’t miss them much in the long run even if you never find them. Now stop your hysterics and run downstairs, but don’t make any noise!”

  Sherrill cast a tearful look at her aunt and hurried away, stopping at her own room to get a little flashlight she kept in her desk.

  Step by step she retraced the evening in an agony of memory. It wasn’t just her losing the emeralds forever; it was Aunt Pat losing the pleasure of her having them. It was—well, something else, a horrible haunting fear that appeared and disappeared on the horizon of her mind and gripped her heart like a clutching hand.

  When she came in her search to the long french window out which she and Copeland had passed to the garden such a little while before, she paused and hesitated, catching her breath at a new memory. If it came to that, there would be something she couldn’t tell Aunt Pat! She couldn’t hope to make her understand about that kiss!

  Oh! A long shudder went through her weary body, and every taut nerve hurt like a toothache. How was she to explain it to herself? And yet—!

  She unfastened the window with a shaking hand and, touching the switch of her flashlight, went carefully over the porch, and inch by inch down the walk where they had passed, not forgetting the grassy edges on either side. On her way back she stopped, and her cheeks grew hot in the dark as she held back the branches of privet and stepped within that cool green quiet hiding place. Oh, if she could but find it here! If only it had fallen under the shrubs. It would have been very easy for it to come unfastened while he held her in his arms. If only she might find it and be set free from that haunting fear. Just to know that he was all right. Just to be sure—! She felt again the pressure of his arms about her, so gentle, the touch of his lips upon her eyelids. It had rested and comforted her so. It hadn’t seemed wrong. Yet of course he was an utter stranger!

  But she searched the quiet hiding place in vain. There was no answering gleam to the little light that went searching so infallibly, and at last she had to come in and give it up. There was utter dejection in her attitude when she came back to Aunt Pat, her lip trembling, her eyes filled with large unshed tears, that haunting fear in their depths. For of course she could not help but realize that that moment when he held her in his arms would have been a most opportune time for a crook to get the emeralds.

  “There isn’t a sign of them anywhere!” she said.

  “Well,” said Aunt Pat, “you can’t do anything more tonight. Get to bed. You look worn to a thread. I declare, for anybody who went through the evening like a soldier, you certainly have collapsed in a hurry. Lose a bridegroom, and take it calmly. Lose a bauble and go all to pieces! Well, go to bed and forget it, child! Perhaps we’ll find it in the morning.”

  “But Aunt Pat!” said Sherrill, standing tragically with clasped hands under the soft light from the old alabaster chandelier, with her gold hair like a halo crowning her. “Oh, Aunt Pat! You don’t suppose—he—took it, do you?”

  “He?” said the old lady sharply, whirling on her niece. “Whom do you mean? Your precious renegade bridegroom? No, I hadn’t thought of him. I doubt if he had the nerve to do it. Still, it’s not out of the thinking.”

  “Oh, Aunt Pat! Not Carter! I didn’t mean Carter.” She said, astonished, “Of course he wouldn’t do a thing like that!”

  “Why ‘of course’?” snapped Aunt Pat grimly. “He knew the value of those stones, didn’t he? And according to his own confession, he needed money, didn’t he? If he would steal a girl’s love and fling it away, why not steal another girl’s necklace? Deception is deception in whatever form you find it, little girl! However, I suppose Carter McArthur had enough on his hands this evening for one occasion, and he likely wouldn’t have had the time to stage another trick. But I hope you are not trying to suspect that poor innocent bystander that you dragged into your service this evening!”

  “He was a stranger!” said Sherrill with white anxious lips and frightened eyes.

  “Hmm! Did he act to you like a crook, Sherrill Cameron?”

  “No, Aunt Pat! He was wonderful! But—”

  “Well, no more buts about it. Of course he had nothing to do with it. I know a true man when I see him, even if I am an old maid, and I won’t have a man like that suspected in my house! You don’t really mean to say you haven’t any more discernment than that, do you?”

  “No,” said Sherrill, managing a s
haky smile. “I’m sure he is all right, but I was afraid you would think—”

  “There! I thought as much! You thought I had no sense. Well, go to bed. We’re both dead for sleep. And don’t think another thing about this tonight! Mind me!”

  “But—oughtn’t I to call the police?”

  “What for? And have them demand a list of our guests and insult every one of them? No emeralds are worth the losing of friends! Besides, nobody can do anything about it tonight anyway. Now get to bed. Scat!”

  Sherrill broke into a little hysterical laugh and, rushing up to her aunt, threw her arms around her neck and gave her a tender kiss.

  “You are just wonderful!” she whispered into her ear, and then hurried back to her room.

  Before her mirror she stood again, looking sternly into her own eyes. Such sorrowful tired eyes as looked back at her, such a chastened little face, utterly humble.

  Somehow as she stood facing her present situation, it seemed weeks, almost years, since she had stood there in wedding satin facing married life like an unknown country through which she had to travel. If she had known when she stood there smiling with her wedding bouquet in her arms, and her wedding veil, blossom-wreathed, on her head, that all this was to be, how would the laughter have died on her lips! How trivial would have seemed her faint fears! Had those fears been a sort of premonition of what was to happen in a few minutes? she wondered. She had read of such things, and perhaps they were in the air like radio waves waiting to be picked up!

  Oh, what a night! What an ending to all that lovely preparation! The tears welled suddenly into her eyes, and a great feeling of being overwhelmed came over her anew. Dust and ashes! How had all the beauty of her life faded in a few short minutes! And how was she to face the long desert of the future?