Beloved Stranger

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Sherrill turned bright, interested eyes on her sweet old aunt.

  “We held hands,” confessed Miss Patricia with a little pink tinge stealing into her soft roseleaf cheek. “It was very early when we started, and there were no people about, not even a carriage on the road. We had a wonderful time. I had some caraway cookies in my silk bag that hung from my arm by little velvet ribbons. Soon there was dust on my best shoes, but I didn’t care. We stopped before we went into church, and James dusted them off. There were narrow velvet ribbon laces to my shoes, crossed at the ankle and tied in a little tassel bow.”

  Aunt Pat’s eyes were sweet and dreamy.

  “We talked about what we would do when we were married,” went on the sweet old voice. “We planned a house with pillars and a great window on the stairs. I was going to do my own work. I had written down a list of things James liked to eat, and I was learning to cook them.”

  “Oh,” said Sherrill, bright-eyed, “it’s just like a storybook.”

  “Yes, it was,” said Aunt Pat. “I was very happy. We walked a good many miles, but I wasn’t tired. I didn’t get tired in those days, of course, but James slipped my hand through his arm, and that made it like walking on clouds!”

  “Dear Aunt Pat!” breathed Sherrill.

  “When we came to that little white church, we knew we had come to the place we had been looking for, though we hadn’t known what it was or where it was. But it was our church. We both exclaimed over it at once.”

  Sherrill nestled her hand in her aunt’s hand.

  “It was still early when we got there. The old sexton was just ringing the first bell, and it sounded out over the hills like music. The bell may have been out of tune, but it sounded sweeter than any orchestra has ever seemed to me. We went and sat on a flat gravestone in the little cemetery under a tall elm tree and ate our seed cakes, and James put his arm around me and kissed me right there in the graveyard. It made me glad with a deep sweet gladness I had never felt before. It seemed just like heaven. And a bird high up sang a wonderful song that went through my heart with a sweet pain.”

  The little old lady had forgotten for the moment that Sherrill was there. Her eyes were dreamy and faraway.

  “People ought never to get married unless they feel like that about each other, Sherry.”

  “No,” said Sherrill, still gravely, “I don’t think I did. I was just happy. Having a good time!”

  There was a long minute of stillness; then Sherrill said shyly, “Tell the rest, please, Aunt Patricia.”

  “Well,” said the old lady, her eyes still on the faraway, “after a while the people began to come. They drove up in buggies and carriages, and a few in old farm wagons with boards across the sides, for seats, and carpet on the boards. Then we got up and walked around among the white stones and read the names and dates until the sexton rang the second bell, and then we went in. A young girl with a pink ribbon and daisies on her hat played an old cabinet organ, and I remember they sang ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’ and God seemed very near to us and we to Him.”

  “Yes?” said Sherrill, nestling closer in a pause.

  “We sat in the very last seat back by the door,” went on the sweet old voice, “and James held my hand under the folds of my ruffles. I had on a very wide bayadere striped silk skirt with three deep flounces, and they flowed over the seat beautifully. I can remember the strong warm feel of his hand now.”

  The tears began suddenly to come into Sherrill’s eyes.

  “We sat all through that service hand in hand and nobody the wiser,” said Aunt Pat with a bit of her old chuckle, and then a softened light came into her eyes.

  “We planned to go back there someday and be married in that church when James had gotten a good job. We loved that church! But Sherry, we never went back there again! The next day they brought my James home with the mark of a horse’s hoof on his temple.”

  She paused an instant, looking far away, and added, “Lutie’s mother was the little child whose life he saved!”

  “Oh, Aunt Patricia!” said Sherrill in a low, awed voice. She understood now why helping Lutie’s family was so important to Aunt Pat.

  “I’ve never been back till today.”

  “My dear!” said Sherrill softly.

  They were at the church now, a little white building set among the trees, with a quaint old graveyard surrounding it. A young sexton was tolling the bell. He would be perhaps the grandson of the old sexton who was there when the young Patricia walked up those steps with her James.

  There were smart cars parked in the old sheds where farm wagons drawn by plow horses, and buggies and carriages drawn by the family horses, used to be hitched so long ago. People were coming along the road dressed in stylish modern clothes. But as Sherrill looked at the pleasant white church, she seemed to see the young Patricia in her wide hooped skirts with silken flounces and a broad flat hat with streamers, walking with her James up the steps of the house of God, and she made much fuss of brushing the tears away before she got out of the car, for people were hurrying by them in happy groups, eyeing them curiously as the shining limousine drew up before the flagstone path.

  Sherrill watched her aunt furtively as they walked together up that path to the church. Her bright eyes had suddenly grown old and tired looking, and the soft cheeks and lips seemed to sag a little wearily. She walked without her usual spring, and when Sherrill drew her hand within her arm, she leaned down heavily upon her as if she were grateful for the support. Her eyes were searching over to the right among the old mossy headstones. Sherrill felt she was looking for the place where she and her young lover had sat so long ago.

  They went into the church and found a seat halfway up. People stared in a kindly way and whispered about them, pondering who they were. There were quaint windows about the walls made of long panes of clear colored glass put together in geometrical forms like a kaleidoscope. The sun was casting long bright rays through them, making quaint color effects of green and blue and yellow on people’s chins and noses, and stabbing the old red ingrain carpet in the aisles with a sickly purple and red that did not match. But there was one window, at the back of the pulpit, high above the head of the minister, a gorgeous window, that was the work of a real master. It pictured an open tomb and an angel in a garden of lilies, with a wondrous blue light in a leaden sky where morning broke the gloom and shed a veil of loveliness over the lilies. Underneath in small clear letters were the words SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES AND PATRICIA and, Joy cometh in the morning. Then a long-ago date in characters so small they were hardly discernible.

  Sherrill stared at it, startled. So that was what Aunt Patricia had done! Given this little stranger church a window! A window with a story that nobody understood! Aunt Pat had likely done it through her lawyer, or someone who did not even know her except as a client.

  Sitting there in the weird light of stark mingled colors, studying that one lovely window, Sherrill worked it all out: the tragedy and the sweetness of Aunt Patricia’s long lonely life, the patience and utter cheerfulness that characterized her. What a lesson to a whining world! She wondered if Aunt Pat had anything besides her own strong self to rely upon. Did she know Lutie’s secret? She was never one to talk religion or to preach. She went regularly to church at least once a Sunday, and there was a little worn old-fashioned Bible on her bedside stand, but Sherrill had never seen her reading it, had never thought of her as being a strong religionist. Could it be that in her quiet way she, too, like Lutie, had something in her heart, some great mysterious power beyond the earthly, that sustained her?

  There was a little old wheezy cabinet organ played by a young girl with jingling silver bangles on her arms. The choir sat on a raised platform behind the organ and whispered a good deal among themselves. When they sang it was rousing. Not all the voices were cultured. When they sat down the green and purple from one of the windows played across their features grotesquely. An old man in the pulpit with the young minister prayed plain
tively, yet there was something exceedingly sweet and uplifting in it, and Sherrill stole a look at the old lady by her side. There was a look of utter peace upon her face, as if a prayer of her own were winging upward to heaven beside the old man’s petition.

  The minister was a young seminary student, a bit crude, a bit conceited, and greatly self-conscious. His words did not seem to mean much in relation to life. Sherrill was thinking of her aunt, and strangely, too, of Lutie’s mother, the girl who had been rescued from death at such a cost. Now why was that? In all human reason it would seem that the young James with such a bright prospect of life, with such a partner as his Patricia, would have been worth infinitely more to the world than just Lutie’s mother, a quiet humble mother of a servant girl. If there was a God supreme above all, surely He would manage His universe wisely, economically. And it seemed such an economic waste to kill a man with great possibilities that humble serving people might live. It did not seem reasonable.

  And yet, in the great economy of life, was it possible that the servant had some duty to perform, some place in the plan of things, that was important?

  It was a baffling question to think upon, and Sherrill had not solved it when she rose to sing the last hymn. She only knew that her soul had been stirred to the depths, but more by Aunt Pat’s story than the sermon, more by the great window with its resurrection story than by the service.

  Kindly hands were put out shyly in welcome when the service was over as they passed down the aisle and out the door. The stately old lady walked sweetly among them, nodding here and there, smiling with that faraway look in her eyes, loving the gracious country folk collectively, because of one Sunday morning long years ago, and a lad who was long gone Home. You could see that they regarded her almost as if it had been an angel visiting their ancient place of worship. And Sherrill walked humbly in the shadow of that sweet soul’s humble greatness.

  The people stood back and hushed their chatter to watch the old lady away, but when she was out on the flagged path again, she did not go down the walk but turned aside to the graveyard.

  “This way,” she breathed softly, and stepped on the young spring grass.

  She led the way around to the side of the church, far back from the road, under a great elm tree.

  “It was there we sat.” She said it more as if talking to herself, and indicated with a little wave of her hand a great flat stone with an ancient date almost obliterated by lichens.

  Then she turned about but a yard or two to the right and stood looking down at a small white stone with a single name, JAMES, cut deep in its side, and a date of a generation ago.

  Sherrill stood still, startled, looking down at that name, realizing all it meant to her aunt to be standing there this morning, the first time she had come there since that beloved lost lover was laid there.

  Just a moment they stood silently, Sherrill feeling the awe of the presence of a funeral pall. Yet there was nothing gloomy about the place. Clear spring sunshine flooding the spot, flicked with shadows of elm branches tossing in the light spring breeze. Birds caroling joyously overhead. The sound of friendly voices of the worshippers was just a few paces away, young laughter, the whirr of a motor starting from the church.

  Unquestionably the young lover had not lain there all these years, his body crumbling to dust. He must be somewhere, doing something. Love and bravery and courage did not just blink out. That conviction came to Sherrill as a fixed fact, though she had never thought of such things before. Where was he, this James, and what faith had Aunt Pat that one day joy would come in the morning?

  She thought of her own life, blighted right at the start. Would there be joy, too, in some morning for a life like hers that had found a lover false-hearted?

  The old lady spoke.

  “I’d like to have what’s left of me put here when I am gone!” she said, laying a hand on Sherrill’s arm. “There’s plenty of room. It doesn’t matter, of course; only it is pleasanter to think of being here than up under that great Catherwood monument at Laurel Hill. They can put my name there if they like, but I’ll lie here. It’ll be nice to think of getting up together in the morning.”

  “Dear Aunt Patty!” said Sherrill, struggling with a constriction in her throat.

  “I’ve put it all in my will, of course, and the stone’s been made ready, just ‘Patricia’ and the date. But I thought I’d like somebody that belonged to me to understand.”

  “Of course!” said Sherrill tenderly, catching her breath and trying to steady her voice. “But—you’re not going yet, dear—not for a long time. You wouldn’t leave me—alone!”

  “Why, certainly not!” snapped the old lady with one of her quiet grins. “I’ve got to look after you for a spell yet. Come on, let’s walk around. We don’t want a lot of people staring at us. There’s no need for them to know we’re interested in just one grave. Let’s walk around the church. There are some curious stones there, very old. James and I found them that day and talked about them. And there’s a view—look! Away off to the hills! I think it’s a lovely spot!”

  “It is indeed,” answered Sherrill, and almost envied her aunt for the joyous look on her face. How she had taken her sorrow and glorified it! Sherrill wondered if she, in like situation, could have risen to such heights, and felt how impossible it would have been for her. Felt how crushed she was by this her own sorrow, which she recognized at once was so much less than what the old lady had borne for years unmurmuring, and said again to herself that there must have been some sustaining Power greater than herself, or human weakness—even human strength—never could have borne it.

  There was something glorified in the rest of that day. Sherrill felt that she had been allowed a glimpse into an inner sanctuary of a soul, and life could never again be the trivial, superficial thing that it had seemed to her before.

  Aunt Pat was very tired and slept a great part of the afternoon, but in the evening she came down to the living room and sat before a lovely fire that Gemmie had kindled for them. She made Sherrill play all the old hymns she used to love. It brought tears to hear the quavering voice that still had a note of sweetness in it, wavering through a verse here and there, and Sherrill, trying to sing with her felt her own voice breaking.

  Yet there was nothing gloomy about the old lady that night, and presently she was joking again in her snappy bright way, for all the world like a young thing, and Sherrill’s heart was less heavy. Aunt Pat wasn’t going away to leave her. Not now anyway.

  Chapter 16

  Sherrill needn’t have worried about her aunt, for the old lady was up the next morning chipper as a bird, eating her breakfast with a relish.

  “We’re going to see Lutie’s mother right away,” she said. “We’ve got to get that family straightened out before we plan to do anything for ourselves.”

  “Oh, that will be wonderful!” said Sherrill, who had arisen this morning with a great pall over life. Since there was no immediate action necessary, she could not get hold of anything in which she was interested. But to help another household who were all in trouble intrigued her. It didn’t occur to her either to realize that the canny old lady was wisely arranging to fill her days too full for her to brood over the past.

  So they went to the neat little house where Lutie lived. Sherrill was amazed to see how attractive the little weather-beaten house had been made. There was lack of paint on its ugly clapboards, lack of grace in all its lines, lack of beauty in its surroundings, for there were slovenly neighbors all about and a great hideous dump not far away to mar what otherwise might have been a bit of landscape.

  But the ugly house had been smothered in quick-growing vines. The ugly picket fence that also needed painting had been covered with rambler roses now beginning to bud; the yard had a neat patch of well-cut lawn, with trim borders where young plants were beginning to give a good showing; and a row of pansy plants showed bright faces along the neat brick walk. The pansies winked brightly up at her like old acquaintances.
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  An ugly narrow court between houses had been concealed by tall privet hedge trained into an arched gateway, and there were nice white starched curtains at the windows upstairs and down. They might be only cheesecloth, but they made the house stand out like a thing of beauty in the midst of squalor.

  “Hmm!” said Aunt Pat appreciatively. “Pretty, isn’t it? I don’t know why I never thought to come here before.”

  The mother opened the door, wiping her hands on her apron, which was an old towel girded about her waist. There was a fleck of soapsuds on her arm, and her face, though the morning was only half gone, looked weary and worn.

  “Oh, Miss Catherwood!” she said to Aunt Pat, her tone a bit awed.

  She opened the door wide and welcomed them in, casting a troubled eye over the room behind her to see if it was surely all in order.

  “But you oughtn’t to be washing!” objected Aunt Pat as she reached the top step and looked into the neat front room. “I thought you were sick. I heard you ought to go to the hospital.”

  The woman gave a helpless amused little laugh, not discourteous.

  “No, I’m not sick,” she said rather hopelessly. “I’m not near as bad off as some. I’ll be all right when Father gets well. Come in, won’t you?”

  Aunt Pat marched in cheerfully.

  “Now, I’m not going to take up any more of your time than is necessary,” she said as she sat down in the big old stuffed chair. “You go and shut off your dampers or gas or whatever it is that’s worrying you, and I’ll talk to you just five minutes, and then you can get back and finish up what you’ve started. I suppose that’s got to be done in spite of everything, but I’ve got something to say that’s even more important.”