Beloved Stranger

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “Please, Miss Catherwood, might I come in and speak to you a moment?” she asked shyly.

  “Why, of course, Lutie. Come right in,” said the old maid cheerily. “What is it?”

  “Why, Miss Catherwood, I found something,” she said earnestly, holding her two hands cupped, the one in the other. “Maybe it isn’t much account, but it looked to me as if it might be something real. It’s only a little thing, and I thought if I gave it to any of the other servants they might laugh, but I knew you would know whether it was valuable or not.”

  Lutie dropped a delicate bit of brightness into the old lady’s hand and stood back waiting shyly.

  Aunt Pat held the bit of jewelry in her delicate old hand for an instant and examined it carefully. Then she looked up at the girl.

  “Where did you find this, Lutie, and when?”

  “Just now, ma’am, in the little back room off the servants’ hall. It was on the floor just under the edge of the little writing table, and I almost swept it up, but then I saw it glittering, and it first looked like a bit of Christmas-tree tinsel, but when I looked closer it seemed like something real.”

  “Hmm!” said Aunt Pat significantly and, looking up at Sherrill, added: “It’s from the emerald necklace, Sherry, a whole inch of chain and part of the clasp!”

  Sherrill gave a startled exclamation, and the old lady turned to Lutie again.

  “Thank you, Lutie, for bringing it straight to me. Did you speak to any of the other servants about it?”

  “No,” said Lutie. “I was afraid they’d laugh at me. They tell me I’m fussy about little things.”

  “Well, that’s a good trait sometimes,” said the old lady. “I’m glad you brought it straight to me. Yes, it’s valuable. It’s part of something we had lost. You might keep your eye out while you’re cleaning to see if you find any more of it. Now, suppose you come and show us just where you found this.” They followed Lutie to the little room in the servants’ hall.

  “Thank you, Lutie,” said Miss Catherwood when she had showed them the exact spot. “I shan’t forget this!”

  “Oh, that’s all right, ma’am. I’m glad you weren’t angry at my bothering you.”

  Lutie withdrew with a shy flame blazing in her cheeks.

  Aunt Pat turned to Sherrill, who was searching the room over, vainly hoping to find more of the necklace.

  “Now, Sherrill,” said Aunt Pat, “tell me just who was in this room and where each one stood. What were they here for, anyway, in this back room?”

  “They came to get the license fixed up with the right names,” said Sherrill, half shivering at the memory. “We sent for the clerk and he sat right there in that chair all the time he was here.”

  “And where did you stand?”

  “Most of the time over there by the door. Once I stepped over to the table while I was explaining to him that I had changed my mind about marrying Carter.”

  The old lady gave her a swift look.

  “Where was Carter at the time?”

  “He stood just back of me.”

  “Hmm! How did he look when you explained that you had changed your mind about marrying him?”

  “I didn’t look at him. I was trying to keep my voice from trembling.”

  “Did he say anything or make any motion that seemed like a protest?”

  “He cleared his throat in a nervous kind of way. I had a fancy that he was afraid I was going to tell more than I did. He stirred uneasily.”

  “And didn’t he speak at all?”

  “Only to answer the questions that were put to him by the clerk. Of course Mr. Copeland had explained the situation to the clerk in a general way, and the questions that were put were mere form. He just assented to everything. Mr. Copeland had really made it very easy for us all.”

  “Hmm!” said Aunt Pat thoughtfully and then reverted to the bridegroom.

  “And Carter assented to all the questions, did he? He made it very plain that he was marrying that other girl by intention? He didn’t make any protests nor attempt any explanations?”

  “Not a word.” Sherrill’s voice told how deeply that fact weighed upon her.

  “Little whippersnapper!” ejaculated the old lady indignantly. “Well, it’s just what I would have expected of him! He hasn’t the backbone of a jellyfish. He was born a coward! Perhaps you can’t blame him so much. He probably had ancestors like that. Well, now, tell me, how long did you stand there?”

  “I stepped away immediately after he had answered his questions and made a place for her—for the bride—to stand.”

  “And did you watch Carter’s face while she was being questioned?”

  “I wanted to, but just then he dropped his handkerchief. He acted very nervous, and he stooped over to pick it up. It seemed to take him a long time. He didn’t seem to want to look at me. I tried to make him. It seemed as if I must make him look at me just once so that we could get adjusted to things. Just a look from him that he was ashamed, or that he felt I had done the right thing, would have made it so much easier. I felt so unhappy and frightened!”

  “I know you did, dear child. Of course! But don’t have any question but that you did the right thing. Well, who else was there? Carter and that girl and the clerk and you? Was Mr. Copeland in the room?”

  “Not at all,” said Sherrill quickly. “He stood outside in the hall every minute. I’m sure of that.”

  “He didn’t even step back into the room when you all came away?”

  “No,” said Sherrill with assurance. “I’m positive of that, for he waited for me at the door and walked across to the middle room with me, and Carter and Arla were behind us. The clerk went ahead, down the back hall and the back stairs the way he had come. He went out of the room before any of us left it.”

  “Who was in the room last?”

  “Why, Carter—and his—that is—the—bride!” she finished with a quick sharp breath. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, I looked back and called to her to follow me and that I would help her get ready. Carter was just behind her. He had apparently dropped his handkerchief again and was stooping to pick it up.”

  “Hmm! What did he do with it?”

  “Why, I think he put it in his pocket.” “And he didn’t look up even then?”

  “No.” Her voice was grave and very sad. “He seemed as if he was ashamed. He almost looked—well—frightened!”

  “Probably was,” said Aunt Pat dryly, “ashamed and baffled. He had been hoping to get a lot besides a bride in marrying you. I didn’t tell you, but I came on him looking at the emeralds the morning I gave them to you. He seemed tremendously impressed with them. In fact, he looked as if he were just gloating over them. He didn’t know I saw him. He thought he was alone. But I can’t help thinking if he’d gotten them he’d have pawned them before the night was over.”

  “Oh, Aunt Pat!” exclaimed Sherrill in dismay. “Why—he—really spoke very beautifully about them. He said he was so proud that I should have regal jewels. He said he only wished that he were able to give me such things but he hoped someday he could.”

  “Oh yes, he could talk!” sniffed Aunt Pat. “He was mealy-mouthed. But don’t try to defend him, Sherrill. I know it hurts to have him turn out that way, but you might as well understand the truth at once and not go to getting him up on a pedestal again. Now, I’ve got to think what to do for Lutie. I like to encourage the sort of thing she did, bringing that bit of chain straight to me. She’s a good girl, and probably needs help. I wonder if I should give her money.”

  “Did you know that she has a little lame brother, Aunt Pat?” asked Sherrill. “And her father is going blind and her mother needs an operation?”

  “Mercy, no!” said Aunt Pat, looking up from the bit of chain she was examining. “Why, how did you find that out? We must do something for them right away.”

  “Yes, they are afraid they are going to lose their house, too. They can’t pay the interest on their mortgage. The bank closed
where they kept their savings, and she and her brother are the only ones working.”

  “Well, for mercy’s sake!” said Aunt Pat, greatly disturbed. “And to think they never said a word! Why wasn’t I told of this sooner? When did you find it out, Sherrill?”

  “Just this morning,” said the girl, thinking back through the day. “I heard Lutie singing in the next room to mine where she was cleaning. She was singing about what to do when you had sorrow in your heart, or something like that. I asked her where she got the song and said I guessed she never had a sorrow, and then she told me all about it.”

  “Hmm!” said Aunt Pat thoughtfully.

  Then she opened the door and called to Gemmie, who was never very far away from her mistress’s call.

  “Gemmie, go see if Lutie has gone home yet. If she hasn’t, tell her I want her a minute.”

  Then she turned back to her niece.

  “Sherrill, this is the setting of one of the tiny emeralds from that chain, see, one of the wee ones up near the clasp. Now, where do you suppose the rest of it is? You know, the clasp used to be weak, but I had it fixed; at least I supposed I had. I sent it to the jeweler’s before I gave it to you. See! This evidently has been stepped on, or else yanked from the chain! How the links are crushed! Now, the question is, where did the necklace drop, and who was there when it happened?”

  Sherrill looked up with troubled eyes, the haunting fear coming back to her soul, but Lutie came in just then, and she had no opportunity to answer her aunt.

  “I sent for you, Lutie,” said Miss Catherwood pleasantly, “because I want to tell you that there is a reward for finding this chain and for bringing it straight to me.”

  Lutie had been a bit troubled at being sent for, but now her face showed great relief and swift protest.

  “Oh no, ma’am,” she said breathlessly, “I couldn’t think of taking anything for just doing my duty.”

  “Well, you’re not; I’m giving it! That’s different! I’m giving it because I’m grateful, and you’ve done me a big favor, one that no money can pay for. You’ve given me one little clue to something valuable and cherished that I’ve lost. And now, listen. I’ve just found out that you’ve got a lame brother, and your father has trouble with his eyes, and your mother needs an operation. In that case I want to help. Yes, it’s my right! You don’t suppose we were put into this world to be pigs with what God gave us, do you? I want to see your mother on her feet again, and if there’s anything that can be done for your father and brother, I want to help do it. Sometimes operations will do wonders with eyes, you know. Another doctor might put your father where he could go to work again.”

  “Oh, Miss Catherwood! You’re too good!” began Lutie, tears of gratitude rolling down her cheeks and her lip trembling into a big smile like a rainbow upside down. “I don’t know as my mother would think it was right to take help from anyone, but it’s wonderful of you to suggest it.”

  “She’d think it right to take it from God, wouldn’t she?” snapped the old lady crisply. “Well, this is just God’s money, and He told me to give you what you needed. There’s no further use in discussing it. I’m coming to see your mother in a very few days.”

  “Well, maybe”—Lutie hesitated, her eyes shining with the great possibility—“if you’d let us work afterward and pay it off when we can.”

  “Pay it back to somebody else, then, not me,” chuckled Aunt Pat in full form now. “I don’t want you to have that on your mind. If you ever get able, just help somebody else out of trouble. I tell you God told me to give you what you need, without any strings to it! And, oh yes, Lutie, if you should find any more of this, just bring it to me at once no matter how busy I may be. It was a necklace, and it had green stones in it. Big ones and little ones.”

  Lutie’s eyes grew wide.

  “I wonder if that green bead I picked up was one!” she exclaimed. “It was just a tiny little bit, looked like glass.

  At first I thought it was a bead, but then I thought it was glass, and I swept it up with the dust. It hadn’t any hole like a bead in it.”

  “Where did you find it, Lutie? What did you do with it?”

  “Why, I found it in the big crack between the floorboards over under the bureau. I had to pry it out with a hairpin. I gathered it up with the dust when I thought it wasn’t anything but glass and put it in the waste for Thomas to burn. Wait, I’ll run down and see if I can find it. Thomas went down to the grocery for Cook. I don’t think he’s burned the trash yet!”

  Chapter 11

  Lutie sped on swift feet and was presently back again, her eyes shining, a tiny green particle held in the palm of her hand.

  Miss Catherwood examined it carefully and Sherrill drew close.

  “It is, it is!” cried Sherrill. “It’s one of the wee little stones by the clasp, Aunt Pat!”

  “Yes,” said Aunt Pat grimly. “Whoever got away with the rest of the stones missed this one anyway.”

  Then the old lady turned to Lutie.

  “Well, you’ve done me another favor, Lutie. Here’s a bit of money I happen to have in hand. Take it and run home now and get something extra nice for supper just for my thanks offering. Tell your mother I’ll be over soon.”

  When Lutie had finished her happy and incoherent thanks and gone, Sherrill came and put her arms around the old lady’s neck.

  “You are wonderful, Aunt Pat!” she said and kissed her tenderly.

  “Nonsense!” said the old lady with an embarrassed grin. “Nothing wonderful about it! What’s money for if it isn’t to help along your fellow men and women? And besides, you don’t know but I may have my own selfish reasons for doing it.”

  “A lot of people don’t feel that way about it, Aunt Pat!”

  “Well, that’s their opinion!” she answered. “All I’ve got to say is they miss a lot, then.”

  “But Aunt Pat, aren’t you going to do anything more about this now? Aren’t you going to call the police and report the loss, or—ask anybody, or anything? Aren’t you even going to tell the servants?”

  “I’ve already told the servants that someone who was here last night lost a valuable necklace, and offered a good-sized reward for finding it, but only Gemmie knows it was your necklace. Gemmie would miss it, of course, when she came to put your things away. She was always very fond of those jewels and was pleased that I was giving them to you. She would have to know. But Gemmie won’t say anything.”

  “But dear Aunt Pat! I do want everything possible done to find it even if it makes a lot of unpleasantness for me. I’d rather have it found. To think that you kept it all these years and then I should lose it the very first time I wore it! Oh, Aunt Pat, I must get it back to you!”

  “Back to me!” snorted the old lady, quite incensed. “It’s not mine anymore. It’s yours, child, and I mean to have it back to you, if possible of course, but if not there’s nothing to break your heart about. Stop those hysterics and smile. You are just as well off as you were last week. Better, I think, for you are rid of that selfish pig of a lover of yours!”

  Sherrill suddenly giggled and then buried her face on her aunt’s shoulder.

  “Aunt Pat,” she said mournfully, “why do you suppose this had to happen to me? Why did I have to be punished like this?”

  “I wouldn’t call it punishment, child,” said the old lady, patting Sherrill’s shoulder. “I’d say it was a blessing the Lord sent to save you from a miserable life with a man who would have broken your heart.”

  “But if that is so,” wailed Sherrill, “why didn’t He stop me before it went so far? Before it would hurt so much?”

  The old lady was still a minute and then said, “Perhaps He did, and you wouldn’t listen. Perhaps you had some warnings that you wouldn’t heed. I don’t know. You’ll have to look into your own life for that.”

  Sherrill looked at her aunt thoughtfully, remembering little happenings that had made her uneasy. The time Carter had gone away so hurriedly back to his form
er home without explanation. The letter addressed to him in a girl’s handwriting that had fallen from his pocket one day, which seemed to embarrass him but which he put back without a word. The telegram he sent her to say he was called to New York when afterward she discovered he had been west again, and when she innocently asked about it he gave but a lame excuse. The conversation she had overheard about him on the trolley calling in question his business principles. The strange way he had acted about not wanting to purchase her necklace at a certain store where she had admired a string of pearls, but had insisted on choosing one from another place. Oh, little things in themselves, but they had made her vaguely uneasy when they happened. Had they been warnings? Perhaps she should have paid more attention to them. But she had been so reluctant to believe anything against him, so determined to shut her eyes to any fault of his!

  There was that day, too, when she had come to the office unannounced and found Arla sitting very close to Carter, her hand in his, her head on the desk, crying. They had jumped apart, and Arla had gone quickly out of the room with her handkerchief to her eyes. Carter had been angry at her for coming in without knocking, and had explained that Arla’s mother had just died and he had been comforting her; there was nothing else to it. That incident had troubled her greatly, and they had had more than one discussion about it, until her own love and trust had conquered and she had put it away from her mind. What a fool she had been!

  She had argued afterward that of course he was not perfect and that when they were married she would help him to overcome his faults. He seemed so devoted! Then there would surge over her that feeling of his greatness, his ability and good looks, his many attractions, and she would fall once more under the spell of wonder that one so talented as he should love her.

  Sharply, too, there came to memory the night before when she had stood looking into her own mirrored eyes, wondering and shrinking back. Was that shrinking the result of those other fears and warnings? Oh, what a fool she had been! Yes, there had been plenty of warning. She was glad of course that she was mercifully delivered from being married to him, but oh, the desolate dreariness of her present situation! A drab life of loneliness to be looking forward to. To have thought herself beloved, and then to find her belief was built on a rotten foundation!