by Norrey Ford
"Aye." He rested, breathing painfully. "Take over at Bramhall's. I'm finished."
Adam sat by the head of the bed. "Are you sure that's what you want?"
"Yes. If you don't want to marry the granddaughter, we can buy Brown's. We can afford it." The smile came again. "I always could buy and sell old Brown, twice over."
"Listen, Father. I talked to Rosemary yesterday. She's marrying Tom Cooper. And we're too late to buy Brown's." "A nice muckment old Cooper will make of it."
"It hasn't gone to the Coopers, but to another buyer who is well known to drive a hard bargain. I doubt if we can buy it back."
John William closed his eyes and lay still so long that Adam thought he'd dozed, or forgotten the conversation. He had done neither. When Adam looked at him again, his eyes were open and he was trying to speak.
"Buy it back, boy. No matter what it costs. I want you to have it."
Adam chafed the old, worn fingers, as if he could pass his vitality into the failing body. "I'll get it, Dad. I'll get it, no matter what it costs."
It would cost far more than money. It would cost pride. What had Verity said? It's easy to give, but to accept one must love wholly. He understood her now. In accepting, one surrendered a little of oneself, one's pride. And to surrender one's pride, one must love a great deal.
To make his father happy, and most of all to find his dear love again, he would have to pocket his pride and go to Robert Bramhall There was no other way.
"You're a good lad, Adam. Having you, these last years, made up to me for—for the others."
Tears gushed to Adam's eyes. "Thank you for saying that, Father. I guess that about fulfils my life's ambition. Now we'll see about fulfilling yours, shall we?"
They were interrupted by a wide-eyed Bella, who beckoned Adam anxiously. He began to tiptoe towards her, when John William spoke.
"What is it, for goodness' sake? There's nothing more irritating than mystery. Say what you've come for."
"There's a visitor. It's—it's your brother Robert. Is he to come in?"
Robert Bramhall pushed past Bella and stumped across the room to the bed. "Well, John William? Where's my daughter?"
His brother stuck out a chin which, hatchet-sharp now, was characteristically obstinate. Life had dealt with these two faces differently, etched different lines on them, but it was still possible to see Robert and John William as twin brothers.
John William said, "Ask my son."
Adam said in a terrible voice, "Is Verity lost? What have you done, to lose her?"
The fight had gone out of Robert. He handed Adam a letter. "Here's her letter. She says you won't know where she's going, but that Uncle John William will know where, and why."
Adam skimmed through the note and turned to his father. "Do you know?"
John William sank back on the pillow. His closed eyes were dark hollows, his skin leaden grey against the snowy white linen.
Robert whispered, "I didn't know he was so bad. Can he answer?"
"Wait a bit. He's tired himself. We've been talking." They moved away from the bedside, and Adam asked in an urgent whisper what had happened.
"You and I didn't treat our lass too well, my lad. I was so puffed up about my great idea, I never thought of consulting her." He rubbed his chin ruefully. "She gave me a tongue-lashing that put me in a shocking temper, but I deserved it. I'm given to playing Tin God, and I burned my fingers at the game at last."
"You're as bad as my father and Sam Brown, Uncle. You think the younger generation are chess pieces you can push around."
Robert shot a cutting glance at him. "Aye, mebbe. But you don't come out of this so well, think on. Instead of giving the girl help and understanding, as she'd a right to expect from a man who loved her, you ran out, head in air, flown with Bramhall pride and temper."
"Do you think I haven't been kicking myself ever since?"
"What's the good of that, to a woman? Self-reproach is a luxury you and I can't afford at this point. You should have gone after her, and said you were sorry. That's the kind of talk a woman understands."
"Would she listen to me?"
"Aye—if you say the right thing. None of that self-pitying stuff. Just a straight I'm wrong and I'm sorry. That is, if you can find her. She's walked out on the two of us, and we deserve it."
Adam pushed his hands through his hair. "We must find her. Where do we begin looking? And what the heck did she mean by saying Father would know? She's only spoken to him once, as far as I know."
Robert tapped him on the chest with a gnarled forefinger. "And when we get her back, boy, we'll have to behave ourselves a bit better. That is, if we can persuade her to come back to us."
"We, Uncle Robert?"
"Yes, we. I take it you still want to wed her?"
There was a queer sound from the pillows. They hurried to John William, alarmed. Feebly, he was laughing.
"I've thought it out now, and a nice pair of fools she's made you look. You don't deserve a bright lass like yon. She ought to have been my daughter, Bob. We only talked ten minutes, but by golly! we understood each other."
Adam knelt by the bed. "Father, for pity's sake! If you know, tell us."
"Send Robinson in the car to the warehouse. Tell him to ask if we've taken on a new girl recently—name of Mary Bell. He's to bring her here. Just tell her I want her."
"Will this Mary Bell know where Verity is?"
"Aye." The tone was dry. "I shouldn't wonder."
Robert had started forward, but John William's glance kept him silent. "Let the boy find out for himself, Bob. You know?"
"I know now, J.W. And I think you're probably right. I should have thought of it."
The three Bramhall men were silent during the time the chauffeur took to return from the docks. John William dozed. Robert sat sunk in thought, face impassive as an idol's.
Adam watched at the window. His fingers drummed a pane, till Robert coughed and glared. Then he, too, was utterly silent.
"The car is here," he announced at last. "There's a girl."
John William nodded, apparently satisfied. "Stand back, both. If I'm right, you'll learn something. I hope it does you good."
Shyly, Verity advanced towards the high, old-fashioned bed. She was dressed in a blue overall, a neat blue cap covered most of her bright hair. Her eyes on John William, she saw no one else in the big, dimmed room.
"They told me you were ill, and wanted to see me, Uncle John William."
"You're working for me, Mary Bell?"
She smiled. "I'm a packer. The foreman says I'm shaping nicely."
"You left a good home. You'd no need to earn your own living. Why did you do it?"
She took the chair so recently vacated by Adam. "You told me that if I were a girl from the orphanage, or the least important worker in your warehouses, you'd welcome me as Adam's wife. I'm both, John William Bramhall. What do you say now?"
"You've picked up the gauntlet I flung down, and you win. You've earned your right to be accepted as my daughter-in-law. That is, if you still want Adam. But why run away? Was that necessary?"
"I was a coward. I had to decide between them, and I couldn't."
"Running away doesn't solve anything."
"For me it does. It solves the question of who is more important in my life—Verity or Mary. For a long time now, Mary has been pushing her way into Verity's life, like a plant buried under a stone. The stone is heavier and stronger than the tiny green shoot, but in time, the green shoot pushes away the stone."
"That's tough on you, isn't it? You were enjoying a nice easy life till that seed started into growth and started pushing. But the way you've chosen now is likely to be hard. Why not go back to Robert?"
"I could no more go back than an oak tree could go back into an acorn."
"And what started that little seed into growth, Mary Bell? It might have stayed dormant all your life."
She gave him a level look. "You know. I think you knew from the beginni
ng, and that's why you threw out that challenge. I didn't find out till later. I had to discover it the hard way. It was Adam. He fell in love with me. The real me— not my outer personality, my face, and my pretty clothes, but the girl deep inside. She felt the warmth of his love reaching down to her, like sunshine and spring rain, and she began to struggle to emerge."
"But you and he have parted brass rags, I'm told?"
She nodded. "But I don't blame him—honestly I don't. You see, he did love Mary, and when he suddenly thought I believed him ready to accept a bribe—to have me handed to him on a lordly dish—he must have thought I'd been false to her. And I had, Uncle John William! I'd suddenly popped back into being Verity." She sighed heavily. "When you have two personalities it's muddling. I daresay I'll do a lot of popping backwards and forwards until I get used to being Mary, able to stand on my own feet and not be dependent on a comfortable home and Daddy's money."
"So you're determined to live your own life as Mary? Work and poverty don't scare you?"
From her pocket she produced a small buff envelope. "You know what that is?"
"A pay packet."
"My first. There's your answer."
"What must I say to Adam if he asks for you?"
"The truth. That I love him." "And my brother?"
"I told him in my note that you would know. But he'd never sink his pride so far as to ask you. If he did, you could tell him the truth, too. What am I to do? I love them both, and it tears me in two. Yet Adam won't forgive Daddy for offering him Brown's—and Daddy won't forgive Adam for being too proud to take it."
"What are you telling me? That Robert bought Brown's?"
She was alarmed by his grimaces till she realized he was trying to laugh.
"The old devil! And offered it to Adam over my head, eh? What did the boy say?"
"That he wouldn't be a party to hurting you and making you a laughing stock. Then—" her voice quivered like a hurt child's—"he walked out on us. Not that I blame him —his pride was hurt past bearing."
"Earlier to-day, Adam sat in that chair and told me he'd get Brown's whatever it cost him. Whatever it cost."
"But he'd have to ask Daddy " Her heart began to
beat in measured thumps. "He meant—he'd surrender his pride, haul down his flag—for me? Is that what he meant, Uncle John William?"
"I didn't know it at the time, because I didn't know Robert held Brown's—but that's what he meant all right. So, if he will sacrifice that high and mighty pride of his, and you will give up all Robert could give you and earn your own living in my warehouse—what does that add up to, eh?"
"It adds up to love," said Adam, close behind her.
She swung round to him, eyes blazing with joy she could not conceal. He took both her hands in his and, holding her at arm's length, gazed at her as if the door of heaven itself had opened for him.
"I did hear what you said, didn't I? Knowing what a self-centred brute I am, you can still love me? You're still willing to take a chance on marrying me?"
A scarlet blush flamed from her white throat to her fore-head. "You were listening?"
"To every blessed word. And I'm not ashamed of it."
She turned to John William. "You wicked old man! You led me on."
"It was the only way to teach that pigheaded young fool." Robert spoke from the depths of an armchair. "And that pigheaded old fool."
"Daddy, what on earth are you doing here? How many more people are there in this room?"
Adam curved a possessive arm round her shoulder. "Three Bramhalls and a Mary Bell—whom I love. Let's thin out the crowd a little."
Gently, he guided her out of the room and shut the door. She glanced back anxiously.
"Those two? Ought we to leave them alone together?" He kissed her. "Give them time. They've a thirty-year-old quarrel to make up."
Suddenly they were clinging together.
"We must never be parted again, heart of corn. I couldn't survive it." He held her as if she might slip from his grasp.
Her radiant smile embraced him. "Neither could I. I think we share one heart, you and I. When we're apart, we're only half alive. So now we marry and live happily ever after. Do you expect to be happy ever after, Adam?"
He looked down at the lovely face upturned to his. "No, tiny heart's delight, I don't."
"Nor I. That would be a fairy-tale life, only fit for the Sleeping Beauty. Not right for the sleeping girl who woke up, and the prince who cut his way through the brambles to find her. They'd want their life together to be real—part of the living, breathing world." She touched his cheek gently. "But when we're unhappy we'll have each other, and that will be everything."
"And when we're happy we'll have each other, too. Just now I'm happier than I can say."
"Me, too."
Their lips clung, and in their kissing there was love that had learnt to be patient and to endure; to suffer and to sacrifice one for another; to forgive. There was the love of a grown man for a woman, and a woman's love for her man—which is the loveliest gift of God.
THE END
