Mary Elizabeth soon went home, wondering if it would be possible for that promised letter to have arrived yet.
Chapter 8
Meantime, down in Florida, a little light twinkled in the inner recesses of a small, neat house deep in an orange grove, and two people sat outside on the porch watching the great June moon come slowly up.
“Well, Mother,” said the man, “I suppose the festivities must be about over now. John’s probably marching down that church aisle with some high and mighty flibberty-jib of a bridesmaid now.”
“The maid of honor,” corrected the sweet old wife. “Yes, I’ve that about her, too. Oh, I do hope John won’t fall in love with somebody utterly unsuitable. He’s such a wonderful boy.”
“And, being a wonderful boy, of course he won’t!” said the father decidedly. “I’m sure I don’t see what you find to worry about, Mother. He’s steered himself safely through all kinds of groups of girls and isn’t scathed yet. You don’t suppose he’s going to lose his head just because he’s best man at a wealthy wedding, do you?”
“No,” said the mother with a slow little trembly sort of sigh. “I suppose not. But life is so full of pitfalls.”
“Meaning girls,” said Father.
“Yes, meaning girls. You know that yellow-haired girl that came out here one day last winter hunting for Jeffrey Wainwright after he had gone home to his Camilla. She was—unspeakable!”
“Yes,” said the father, “she was, but don’t you know John would have thought her unspeakable, too? And besides, Margaret, have you forgotten that John is under guidance? Our Father isn’t going to let our John go through anything that He doesn’t want him to meet and pass safely through!”
“I know.” The voice was very sweet and low. There was strength and sweetness in the dim outline of her cameo face, a hint of John Saxon’s seriousness and depth of character in the soft brown eyes she lifted to gaze at the moon. Her hair was soft and white. She reminded one of a delicate flower, fragile and sweet.
They were silent for a long time, watching the moon march up the heavens. At last the old man spoke. He was fine and strong himself, though a bit bent with hard work, but there was still the ring of the conqueror left in his voice.
“Isn’t it time you went in, Margaret?” he asked at last. “You know these nights are really chilly in June, after the terrible heat of the day.”
“Oh, Elam, it’s such a relief after the heat of the day. I can’t bear to leave it, this sweet coolness. I love to watch the dark shadows among the orange trees, and I love the perfume in the air. I sort of dread tomorrow again. That intermittent rain and steamy sunshine are almost unbearable sometimes.”
“You poor child!’” said the man, regarding her anxiously. “I’m almost afraid this is going to be too much for you. It will likely be another year or two before we can afford to go north for the summers. The grove is coming into bearing so nicely now, and if we just don’t have another freeze, we’ll be on our feet. But Margaret, we could have borrowed money on the grove and sent you north this summer. You ought to have gone with John. Even a few days in another climate would have done you good. You’ve been down here too long.”
“And what about you, Elam?” said the sweet old voice.
“Oh, I am all right! You know I like this hot weather! I just thrive under it. It’s you I’m thinking about. You’ve been down here too long. You ought to have gone with John. He would have found a nice quiet place for you to board cheaply—”
“I? All alone? Oh, Father! I couldn’t stand it alone. I’d just mourn for you. Nonsense! Don’t talk like that! I can’t even bear to think about it!”
“Well, I’m not so sure John won’t say something more about it when he gets back. If he gets the chance to study with that wonderful doctor he’s talked so much about, there’s no reason why he couldn’t take you with him and let you mend his socks and cook his breakfast at least.”
“No, Elam! I’d never consent to go and leave you! Never! And as for John, he needs every cent he has saved. He’s got to have these advantages he’s worked so hard for, and we ought to save everything we have to help him out.”
“Oh, John’ll do all right. Don’t you worry about him, Mother. He’s young and strong. Mother, do you realize how late it is getting? That wedding must be about over. They’ve eaten the ice cream and cut the wedding cake and maybe thrown rice, or is it old shoes they throw at the bride? And it’s time you and I went to bed.”
“We don’t go to a wedding every night, Elam,” said the old wife wistfully. “I’ve been looking down that aisle in the orange grove watching the bride walk away from the altar and thinking about our wedding, Elam. We had a nice wedding, too.”
“We certainly did, Margaret, and you were the most beautiful bride a man ever had. And you’re beautiful today. Your hair was brown then and it’s white now, but it’s just as lovely. In fact, I don’t know but you look even more beautiful to me tonight than you looked then. You were almost a child then, a bonny child, but untried. But now I can see the dear lines that time and care and pain and sickness and trouble and poverty have engraved on your face, and they have only made you more lovely. I think it’ll be like that in heaven, Margaret, we’ll see the lines that life has put upon us; in some it will have cut away all the faults and mistakes and follies, and there will be little left, but with those who have been faithful in the testings, it will show up a wondrous beauty!”
“You’re a foolish old flatterer, Elam Saxon, and you always were, but I like it of course, and I could say a great deal more about the way you’ve been true as steel, and strong and courageous and always borne me up. You’ve been a tower of strength!”
“That’s it, Margaret, that’s it! Keep it up now! I know it’s overdrawn, but I like it, too. And just to think, all those years have passed since you and I walked down that aisle together into life, and now our boy is attending a grand wedding and taking part in it. I’d like to see it, wouldn’t you? He’ll tell us all about it when he comes back.”
“Yes,” said John Saxon’s mother and drew a little fleeting sigh. “And then, someday, he’ll probably be walking down an aisle on his own account. And oh, I hope he’ll get the right girl—”
“Of course he will!”
“And that you and I can go to the wedding,” finished the sweet old breathless voice hurriedly.
“We’d go to John’s wedding if we had to cut down the orange trees and sell them bit by bit for kindling wood. We’d go if we had to walk!” said the father, rising and reaching out his hand to her. “Come, Mother, it’s time for you to be in bed. John’s finished this wedding and gone to his train. It’s midnight, and tomorrow he’s going to see the great doctor man. We’ll go in now and pray for our boy!”
Mary Elizabeth arrived at her own home, looked eagerly among the mail lying on her desk, and felt a distinct pang that there was nothing there that she could not immediately identify. It seemed reasonable to suppose that if he wrote a letter as soon as he got on the train, it might have reached here by the time she did, and her heart went down with a dull thud and seemed to touch the foundations of things.
Maybe he wouldn’t write at all. Maybe this had been only an incident with him, and now it was a closed incident, although her heart bounded up once more and told her firmly that that couldn’t be so! After all she had been hearing from Sam about him, he just couldn’t be that way. It was impossible!
With her heart on the rebound again, she sat down and gathered up the rest of her discarded mail and went through it. Nine invitations. She threw them down on the desk. They didn’t interest her, no matter what they were. Several bills, but those didn’t bother her. Bills never had. Yet it did come to her with a strange pang that there were people in the world who had hard work to meet bills when they arrived. John Saxon was a man who had always had to be careful. To think of his pawning his watch and precious books to send that little child to be cured. How wonderful of him!
There were
racy letters from several of her girlfriends telling of their social engagements, of their triumphs and disappointments. They all seemed flat to her just now. Perhaps by and by she would be interested in them again, but now her heart was on the alert. Was it possible that a few hours in the company of one stranger had entirely soured the flavor of other life for her? Ridiculous!
She reached for the last letter in the pile, Boothby Farwell’s. She recognized the handwriting at once, of course. He had pride in doing everything he did precisely and perfectly. His handwriting was no exception. It was almost like copperplate. The address on his letters was always intriguing because of the perfect writing. Yet she found herself drawing a weary sigh that she must read that letter and face the problems that it would inevitably bring to light.
She still had that gorgeous ring in her possession. She had promised, half reluctantly, to wear it while she was away, and test herself out. He had hoped, she knew, that it would help her to a decision. He had thought that she was merely playing with him and that she certainly meant to marry him in the end, and she felt he was growing weary of the delay.
She had gone away to Europe twice to get away from his insistence, and his persistence had almost brought her to think that perhaps she might yield in the end. If she had not felt so, she would never have consented to take the diamond away with her. She had taken it more to please him than with any real idea of keeping it. He had counted greatly on the beauty of that stone, she knew. He was proud of it. And indeed, no man could show his devotion more flatteringly than by presenting the woman of his heart with a remarkable stone like that. Perhaps she had even been a little pleased herself at the thought of wearing it, of trying out the idea that it belonged to her.
And she had worn it but one short hour! What would he say if he knew?
Then she opened the letter and read.
There was a smug assurance about his sentences that had never struck her before. Perhaps she had never really taken him seriously until now. Perhaps the wearing of his ring for that one brief hour had given her a new vision of what he was and what it might be to live out the rest of her days by his side.
He seemed to take it for granted that all was settled between them, now that she had consented to wear his ring—at least to receive it for consideration—for that was all he had at last persuaded her to say. And now he wrote as if she had actually become engaged to him! She was astonished by how it annoyed her.
The letter was about their plans for the future. That is, he was announcing to her when they would be married and what they would do, where they would go, and how they would live. It would seem that he had thought out every detail and had no idea of asking her to suggest what she would like. His was the last word in everything—his taste, his wishes, his likes and dislikes.
And then she suddenly saw something that had not been plain to her before, because she had not been thinking much about such things, and that was that she did not, could not, had not loved him at all. She hadn’t even been considering him from that standpoint. In fact, love had not figured in her thoughts with regard to him. It had all been a question of whether he would be pleasant to get along with and one whom she could rely on to act according to the code of her upbringing. She hadn’t been very sure a few days ago that there was such a thing as love, and if there was, whether it was something to be seriously considered when one was thinking of marrying. Very young uncontrolled natures might indeed fall into what they called love, a sort of wild idealism that took hold of unanchored souls, but never of well-trained sane people who could look ahead and plan for the future.
Now she saw that she had reckoned without knowledge and that new knowledge had come to her hitherto untried soul and given it a vision that changed everything.
That one brief walk down a church aisle, those few sweet, deep sentences, red hot from a strong, true heart, had changed her whole outlook on life. She suddenly saw that it made all the difference in the world whether you loved a man or not if you were going to marry him. There might be other weighty matters to consider, but that was the first, and must be paramount to all others. And she saw that if she loved Boothby Farwell this letter would thrill her— or would it? She read some of the smug dictatorial sentences over and considered them in the light of possible love between them, and they still sounded selfish and utterly conceited. Oh, he told her in very fine English that he loved her, that she had been his ideal woman for a long time, that it was a great satisfaction to have the matter settled at last, and that now he might begin to put his mark upon her, and enjoy her.
It seemed as if she were a new car, or an exceptional kind of yacht that he had been purchasing, and that he were setting forth the price that he was to pay. She was to be taken to the ends of the earth to see all the things he enjoyed seeing, and then they were to settle down where he had always wanted to live, and do the things he liked to do, and she was to like them.
Then her mind ran away from the words her eyes were reading, back to last night, to precious words that had been spoken in her ear in desperate haste, the dear feel of arms about her that hungered for her, the look that she had felt meant lovely deference to her in all ways possible!
Then there was another thing she began to understand, and that was that when a man loved her that way and she loved him, her utmost desire would be to please him and not herself and that any true marriage would be that way, each desiring most the will of the other. Strange that one brief evening with a stranger had taught her all that!
At last she cast Boothby Farwell’s letter aside carelessly, gathering it up with her other letters and stuffing them in a drawer. In the morning she would send back his ring. That was a foregone conclusion.
Wait! What had his letter said? That he was calling at eleven in the morning to go with her to look at an estate he had thought of purchasing, and they would lunch in town together afterward.
Well, then, the ring must go back to him earlier. She did not want to look at estates, and she did not want to argue questions of matrimony with him anymore.
So she seized her pen and a sheet of paper and wrote large:
Dear Boothby:
I tried your ring for a little while, but I found it far too heavy for my hand. I couldn’t live up to it. And the truth is, Boothby, I find I don’t really love you enough to marry you, and so we’ll just call the whole thing off, if you please.
Sorry I can’t ride with you in the morning. I have another pressing duty that includes lunch, but thank you for the kind thought of me. And I hope you won’t hold it against me that I hadn’t thought about this matter of love before, for it really seems quite important, you know. So I’m returning your ring by Thomas, who has instructions to give it into your hand direct.
Always your friend and sincere well-wisher,
Mary Elizabeth Wainwright
Then Mary Elizabeth sealed her letter, put the ring in a lovely white kid box, enclosed both letter and ring in another worthy box, addressed her package in that same firm large writing, set her alarm clock for an early hour, and went to bed to dream she was walking down that church aisle with John Saxon.
Chapter 9
Sam Wainwright woke early the next morning and began to consider his prospects for the summer. He felt very sure that something more must be done, and done quickly, or his mother would manage it somehow that he would go to the sissy camp after all. He had had one-night victories before that had turned out the wrong way the next day. But what to do was the question.
Of course he might write to Jeff, but Jeff was a long way off by this time. In fact, no one knew yet where Jeff had gone. Silly thing, that, going off from everybody just because you had got married. He wouldn’t do that when he got married. If he ever did, he’d stick around and have a good time.
And like as not Jeff would be too busy getting acquainted with Camilla to answer him right away, even if he knew where to write, though Jeff was always pretty good about knowing when things were important. Well, he’d write
. He’d get up pretty soon and write just a line or two anyway, and likely Dad would know where was a good place to send it. Jeff would tell Dad. Dad knew how to keep his mouth shut.
His next best bet, he decided, was Dad. He would get Dad off by himself and tell him some more about that camp. Tell him plenty. Tell about the gambling that went on there; that would get Dad’s goat. Tell him about some of the songs they sang and the stories they told. Tell him how that poor fish that thought he was the camp manager was off with a lot of fool girls all the time and didn’t pay any attention to what the fellas were doing. Tell him you could get by with anything. Those things would open Dad’s eyes.
And then he’d tell Dad about Mr. Saxon’s camp, how different it was. He’d tell him to ask Jeff about it.
He lay still a long time thinking what he would say to Dad, thinking how the Florida camp had cemented the boys together in a bond of friendship that never could be broken, thinking about the campfires and the singing, and the prayers, and suddenly his eyes grew large and thoughtful, and he arose from his bed and went down on his knees. God knew about the camps, both of them, and if God wanted him to go to the sissy camp, of course he had to go, but personally he felt sure God wouldn’t approve of that camp at all. So he put the matter before God in his most earnest way, and then, with a cheerful face, he rose and began to dress rapidly. He was no longer worried about his summer. He felt sure that his prayer would be answered. He meant, of course, to do all he could to help answer it himself, but he had confidence that God would look after the rest for him, and he went down the stairs whistling softly, knowing that his father was usually at breakfast early and went to town before the rest of the household was even awake.
His father looked surprised when Sam walked into the dining room. He lowered his paper and greeted him with a smile.
“Thought mebbe I’d go down ta the office with ya, Dad,” Sam said genially. “Thought mebbe ya might miss Jeff a little, and I could take his place, run errands ur something for ya.”
The Strange Proposal Page 9
