Beloved Stranger Read online

  Ah! To have lifted the goblet of Life to her lips, and suddenly to have had it snatched from her without even a single sip! How was she going to bear it all?

  It was like coming up to a great stone wall and not being able to scale it, a stone wall on every side, and not even a desire left to try to get over it. All that she really wanted just now was to drop down and sleep and forget.

  Well, that was just what she had promised Aunt Pat she would do, but even the effort seemed too much.

  She turned from the mirror, too tired even to cry, and saw that Gemmie had laid out one of her plain simple nightgowns, nothing new and smart, just an old, soft, well-worn gown out of her pleasant thoughtless past. Gratefully she crept into it and got into her bed.

  She was too tired to think, too burdened to toss and weep. All she wanted was to sink down into oblivion; and that was just what happened. Tired nature pulled a curtain about her, and she drifted away into deep sleep.

  But it was not a peaceful sleep. There were troublesome times and buffetings. She was having to drive her car very fast over a rough wild road in a storm, and her wedding veil kept blowing over her eyes and getting tangled in her steering wheel. Carter seemed to be standing somewhere ahead in the darkness, waiting for her with a terrible frown on his handsome face, the frown he had worn when he first saw Arla enter that door. She was late for her wedding and out of breath. She seemed to be lost on a wild prairie, and was afraid, terribly afraid!

  Over and over she dreamed this with variations. Sometimes it was snowing, and the sleet stung her cheeks and shriveled the lilies of the bouquet in her lap, but she had to go on until she finally arrived at a strange dark rendezvous in an unknown country, and plunged out of her car, letting it run away into the darkness without her. She groped about in the night to find her wedding, but there was only a closed and darkened church. She was filled with despair till a stranger, whom yet she seemed to have known all her life, came out of the shadows and helped her home. A stranger who kissed her gently when he left her at her door.

  Chapter 8

  A great gust of perfume from many flowers wafted out into the passageway as the steward threw open the door and ushered in Arla and Carter McArthur. Flowers everywhere! Sherrill’s flowers!

  Arla stepped back and closed her eyes quickly as if she had been struck in the face. Carter frowned angrily. He stepped inside and looked at the array. Flowers, fruit, candies. A haunted look passed over his face. This all represented what he had lost in the other bride. Popularity, wealth, influence! He began to examine the cards of the friends who had sent them. Sherrill’s friends. All Sherrill’s friends. None of his represented except the big basket of fruit from his underpaid office. He looked at it contemptuously. Smelton with his six children and sick wife, Johnny Farr the errand boy with a widowed mother, Miss Gaye the assistant secretary who wore bargain-counter clothes and chewed incessant gum. Arla! Arla? Had Arla contributed to that basket of fruit, too? He cast a quick look at her, his wife, swaying there in the doorway looking white and miserable. Could it be possible that those poor wretches had asked Arla to contribute to a voyage gift for her rival? He had a passing sense of what it might have meant to her to be asked. The whiteness of her face showed she was not enjoying the festive array. Just for an instant he forgot his own annoyance and realized sharply what all this might have been to her. And yet how well she had gone through with it! So confidently, almost radiantly. It had been maddening to have her so confident, when she had dared to interfere, yet somehow it had also stirred his pride in her. After all, she was beautiful. No one could deny that! But she had gone beyond all limits in coming there to the house and precipitating this disaster. Yes, disaster! It meant destruction to his well-laid financial plans. And no matter how lovely this unsought bride might be, how well she might carry off her position as his wife, that could not offset the fact that he had in himself no position for her to carry off. It had all been a big bluff dependent on Miss Patricia Catherwood’s fortune. And what he was to do now remained to be seen. However crazy he might always have been about Arla, that did not alter the fact that he cared for money and position more than he cared for any living woman. And he had in his mind the comfortable realization that he could always get the adoration of another girl if one failed him, or became for the time unwise.

  Arla rallied her self-control and quietly entered in the wake of the bags, drifting unobserved into a corner until the steward had left and they were alone.

  Carter readjusted the baggage, placing his own suitcase on top impatiently. He was one who always expected those serving to anticipate his slightest unexpressed wishes. He swung savagely around to Arla, stranded pitifully by the door, her arrogance and initiative all gone now, nothing but a frightened look in her eyes. She knew his moods. She understood that her time had come to pay for what she had done.

  “Well, if that’s what you wanted, there you have plenty of it!” he said, waving his hand toward the gifts. “Enjoy it while you can. It’ll probably be the last you’ll see of this sort of thing. If you could only have made up your mind to wait awhile, we might have had all this and more!”

  The frightened look faded from Arla’s eyes and lightning came instead. Her lips grew thin and hard. She turned away from him haughtily and busied herself removing her gloves. She looked very handsome and angry as she stood there not listening to him. He could not but see how smart she looked, how becoming her clothes. She knew how to dress. If only he could weather this crisis somehow, things might not be so bad after all. She really knew how to wear her clothes just as well as Sherrill, could perhaps make an appearance to suit his pride. And of course she was beautiful, of much the same type as Sherrill. That was what had attracted him to Sherrill in the first place—that she had reminded him of Arla. And perhaps Arla could learn. She could get rid of her provincialism. She had learned a lot already. But the money! If he only could be sure—!

  He swung around and began to fumble with the baggage, stowing one big suitcase that contained his wedding garments back under the bed. Swinging another down and shoving it after. Of course the steward would attend to all that presently, but it suited him to be stirring, throwing things around. This was an awkward moment; various emotions were striving within him.

  Arla stood where she had first entered, pulling off her long gloves deliberately, finger by finger, smoothing them carefully, thoughtfully. She was struggling to keep from bursting into tears.

  The steward tapped at the door, and Arla made no move to answer it, but moved away and stood staring out of the porthole at the panorama of harbor lights. Already they were moving out into the stream, and she had a strange dreadful feeling that she was heading out into the midstream of life, leaving behind all that she knew, all that she had hoped, going into a wild lonely sea of problems and perplexities and going utterly unprepared and unloved.

  Carter had gone to the door. She heard the conversation vaguely, as if it had nothing to do with her. It was something about a telegram. The operator wished to speak to Mr. McArthur. Carter went out and Arla wondered idly why he was sending a telegram now, on his wedding night, but she was filled with indifference concerning it.

  Carter had left the door unlatched as he went out, and the draft from the open porthole cooled her hot cheeks. She turned to fasten the door, realizing that she was alone, a brief breathing space, and looked about her again.

  Those flowers! How wonderful it would have been if they had been hers! If she had been a girl with friends who could send farewell greetings in such a costly style! Why, all these gifts, the wedding that had preceded them, had been but the fulfillment of her childish fairy dreamings—all the things she had most wished for in life—and now they had come, and how empty they were! How one’s heart could starve in the midst of plenty!

  She went about the room stealthily examining the cards, removing them with frightened hasty fingers. She would put them out of sight before Carter returned.

  Some of the names she re
cognized as belonging to people who had been down the line and been introduced to her such a little time ago. They had gone through the motion of friendship with her, but that would be all. She would likely never see them again. For a brief moment she had walked with the elite and been recognized by them, but she was not a part of them, never would be. They were not of her world! Her highest dreams had been realized and yet had brought her no joy. Emptiness and sawdust! How she hated it all! How she wished for the old sweet simple days when she went to high school in pretty gingham dresses and Carter carried her books for her, looked down adoringly into her eyes, told her how lovely she was!

  Oh, what had she done, how had things gone wrong, that they had come to this night? She remembered the look he had given her as he waved his hand toward the flowers and told her to enjoy them while she could, that it was probably the last of that sort of thing she would see. She shivered with anguish as she felt his contempt all over again, and realized that he was not the Carter of her happy school days, not even the whimsical lover who had sent for her to be his secretary. She must face that fact and not give way to sorrow. Then her lips became set with determination, and she stepped calmly to the bell and rang for the stewardess.

  When the woman presented herself, Arla waved toward the flowers.

  “I would like you to take all those away,” she said coldly. “They sicken me. Take them down to the steerage, please, and give them to the old women and the little children.”

  When Carter came back, the flowers were all gone. The boxes of expensive candies were gone. There was left only the basket of fruit from the office standing alone on the dresser.

  “Why—where—what—?” asked Carter, looking about and sensing the emptiness.

  “I told the stewardess to take them down to the steerage and give them to people who could enjoy them,” she said in a cold steady voice.

  Carter looked at her half startled. He had had so many startling things flung at him already this long terrible evening that one more or less made little impression. Then his eyes swept about the room again and he noticed the fruit.

  “Why not that one, too?” he asked, his lips settling into their habitual sneering curve.

  “Because that one is yours!” she answered steadily. “Because I paid for that myself!”

  “You paid for it yourself?” he exclaimed, looking at her in astonishment.

  “Yes, I paid for it myself!” she answered, folding her gloves smoothly together again and laying them out on the table.

  “But—why? Why should you pay for them? Why not the others? Who got up the idea?”

  “It wasn’t gotten up. I did it all. They don’t even know about it. They hadn’t any money to put into gifts. They have all they can do to keep from starving. Johnny’s mother is likely dying tonight. He won’t be able to get any flowers for her funeral! Smelton’s wife has had a relapse, and one of his children has a broken leg; the only child who had any job at all. Miss Gaye needs all her salary for gum. Who would you think would send you fruit from the office if I didn’t?”

  “But why you?” he asked again, a strange incredulous look in his eyes.

  “Why I?” answered the girl with a flash of her tear-drowned eyes and a sudden quiver of her lovely lip. “Why I? Because I was a fool! Because I’ll always be a fool, I suppose, where you are concerned! Because I thought I loved you, and wanted you to have all the honor there was, even from an office like ours! It was just after you told me that I had always been—Oh, what’s the use! I won’t say those empty words over. I had a spirit of self-sacrifice. I thought I loved you enough to sacrifice myself! That was before I found out I couldn’t stand it! It was before I told your other bride that I’d go through hell to marry you. It was even before I understood what hell was like!”

  “Did you tell her that?” His face was white with anger and a strange wild remorse.

  “Yes, I told her that when she said she wouldn’t marry you after what she’d seen, and asked me if I would, and I said I’d go through hell to marry you! But I didn’t know what hell could be like then, even at the beginning. I thought I was in it then, but I wasn’t.”

  A wave of shamed color swept over his face, leaving it white as death. He almost staggered and put out his hand to steady himself against the wall.

  “You don’t care that you’re putting me through hell, do you?” he whined impressively.

  She gave him a withering glance.

  “You deserve it,” she said fiercely. “I don’t! I’ve always tried to be as decent as you would let me. I never played fast and loose with you. I’ve loved you always—and—I love you—now! God help me! Why do I love you? Oh, why? You are despicable! You know you are! How could anybody love a little handsome selfish beast like you? And yet I do! Oh, what a wedding night!”

  She threw herself suddenly down upon the bed and wept bitterly. And he, trembling, almost ashamed, filled with passionate remorse and angry retaliation, turned the light off and crept humbly to her side, kneeling, groping for her hand. Her words had lashed him through fury into a sudden brief fleeting vision of himself.

  “Arla!” he said, reaching after her in the dark. “Arla! Don’t cry that way! I do love you!”

  Chapter 9

  Sherrill awoke in the morning with a gorgeous sunlight streaming across the lovely old blue rug, lighting her familiar room cheerfully.

  Then instantly, as if someone had struck her across the heart with a club, there came to her a remembrance of all that had happened since she awoke in that room so joyously yesterday morning. The future, drab and desolate, stretched itself away before her, a dreary prospect.

  Sherrill’s soul turned sick at her own desolation, and all the horror of her situation rushed over her with a realization of details which she had not had time for last night in the sudden stress and need for immediate action.

  And now of course the first thought that occurred was, had she done right? Was her action too hasty? Had there been any other way? What would other girls have done? Could she have married him knowing the truth about him?

  Of course, if there had been the least doubt about it, if there had been any chance at all that she was misjudging him, she would have been wrong not to have given him an opportunity to explain, to clear himself if he could.

  But she had heard his own words. She had seen him clasp that other girl and kiss her with the same passionate fervency with which he had kissed her. She had seen his face as he took her in his arms. She could never forget it. Yes, she had heard his own confession that he still loved the other girl, and that after his marriage and wedding trip they would be freer than ever—! Ah! She caught her lips between her teeth with a trembling breath. How that sight, those words had stabbed her! Oh no, there was no possibility of doubt. He was false-hearted. He had meant to be false!

  If he had just been weak and fallen into this situation, one could forgive. Forgive, but not marry. She could never marry a man whom she could not trust.

  But he had been deliberately false, and she could scarcely be sorry for him. No, she could only be sorry for that poor desperate girl who had been willing to go through hell to have him.

  Well, there was such a thing as hell on earth, of course. Her own present outlook seemed not far situated from such a location, and yet she knew if she had to go through even a mild kind of hell for the rest of her life, she would rather take it alone than tied up to the man whom just a few short hours before she had been joyously preparing to marry. No, she must be thankful that a kind Providence had even in such a tragic moment prevented her from marrying Carter McArthur.

  And yet though all that was true, Sherrill Cameron lay with wide desperate eyes staring out at a sunlit desolation.

  She closed her eyes again and tried to wish herself back to sleep, but the eyes flew open like a doll’s that had lost their weights. She knew that she was definitely awake for the day and could not drop back into merciful oblivion again even for a brief space. She must face what was befor
e her.

  So she lay staring about the room that had sheltered so much of her joy and happy anticipation, and suddenly from every wall and corner things jumped out at her that had been connected with her courtship. A great bunch of dried grasses that she and Carter had gathered the day they took their first walk together. It filled a thin crystal vase on the mantel and made a thing ethereally lovely. Gemmie never would have known that it was a reminder of dear dead days.

  High over her white marble mantel was fastened a pennant. It spoke of the first football game she had attended with Carter, less than a year ago! Gemmie wouldn’t have realized that the pennant spoke eloquently of a lost past.

  Knotted carelessly on the corner of a signed etching on the opposite wall, for no apparent reason at all, was a bow of scarlet ribbon, a memento of last Christmas, kept because Carter had tied it about her hair the morning they were skating together, and then had drawn her face back and kissed her behind a sheltering hemlock tree that hid them from the view of the other skaters on the creek. And that was another memory that she must cut out and throw away. It did not belong to her and never had belonged, it seemed! Gemmie had no idea what that red ribbon meant.

  Over on her desk that bronze paperweight! Gemmie never had known that it had been on his desk the day she first went with Carter to his office. She had admired it and he had given it to her. That was before Arla came to be his secretary! Ah, but he had known and loved Arla first! He loved her enough afterward to have sent for Arla. And yet he had gone right on with his intimacy with Sherrill! The bronze, too, must go into the trash!

  And over on the bureau, that little ivory figurine! Gemmie had always admired that. But she did not know that Carter had bought it for her in a curio shop the day they went together to New York.

  Oh! She could not bear these memories! She must not! She would give way and weep. And weeping was not for her today! She must keep a mask of happiness on her face. She must not let anyone suspect that her life was shattered by that wedding as it had come out last night. They must think it was all planned or at least that a definite and friendly change was made before the ceremony. She could not go around and explain the whole thing as it had happened. Even if she were willing on her own part, she could not explain what involved others’ secrets. No, she must play her part through to the end and keep a brave, cheerful, even merry face. How was she to do it?