Kerry (33 page)

“As if I’d care to go on an old common sight-seeing boat, when I’ve sailed the Mediterranean in my own yacht!” sneered Sam Morgan’s wife.

“Well, I’m sorry,” said Kerry, and went out, her morning saddened by the little dialogue.

Yet nothing could quite take away the joy of anticipation. He was coming! He was coming! He was coming! The cars that rattled by sang it, the trucks boomed and clattered it, the trolleys hummed it, the very newsboys on the street tuned in with phrases of their own, and seemed to be rejoicing with her. There might be a sad ending to the meeting, but—he was coming!

The morning went slowly, and it was hard to keep her mind on her work. She kept going back to that wonderful telegram, and rejoicing over the reference he had included in it. She would not let him do it, of course, but it was wonderful to think he should offer. She thrilled anew every time she thought of it. Of course he had no idea what it would be to live with her mother. Kerry had no illusions. She was facing facts. She loved her mother but she knew that she was a silly, vain, spoiled, complaining, selfish woman. It was a daughter’s duty to bear without complaining, but she had no right whatever to drag a man she loved into that kind of life and of course she did not intend to do it. Over and over again she told herself this tale.

At last the release from the office came and just in time for her to meet the train, for truly it did happen that day that an extra rush on account of delayed printing made it necessary for all proofreaders to remain beyond their usual time.

Kerry took a taxi to the station at the last minute, and came breathless to the waiting room where he had told her to be.

Five minutes later she saw him coming toward her. What a man he was, even more attractive than she remembered him, his smile gleaming out before he reached her, sending her heart into quivers of joy, sweeping away all resolves, all reasons, everything but just the breathtaking fact that he was hers, and he was willing to take her in spite of all drawbacks, willing to take over her trials as well as herself.

She got up and stood trembling for his approach.

“Silly,” she told herself, and beamed at him, her eyes like stars, her cheeks glowing, all the worry of the weeks banished, just gladness in her face.

There before all the hurrying crowds and the staring multitude he stooped as if he had the right and kissed her, drew her two hands within his for an instant, and looked deep into her eyes. Then, as if he had fathomed her love and was satisfied, he said, “Come, let us find a place where we can talk.” He searched out a quiet corner, which had just been deserted by a large family and there they sat down.

“Now first,” he said smiling, “get this! I don’t intend to be shaken, nor turned down nor rejected. I’m going to be worse than Dawson. If I can’t get you any other way I’ll kidnap you, and I’ll do it better than he did. I’ll really get you for keeps, and there won’t be any Ted around to help you out either for I’ll suborn him first.”

“Oh, but I mustn’t let you,” said Kerry firmly. “I love you for it, but I mustn’t. You don’t know my mother. I love her, but she is an unhappy woman, and she makes everybody around her unhappy. I hate to have to tell you that, but I would rather tell you than have you experience it and blame me for letting you in on it.”

“So you think I would blame you, do you?” he asked, suddenly grown serious.

“Oh, no, I know you wouldn’t! You never would! But in your heart you could not help feeling I had not been quite square with you. Truly you cannot understand how hard it would be for you.”

“Would it make it harder for you if I was there to help share the unpleasantness?” he asked tenderly.

“Oh, no!” she said with a deep, drawn, wistful sigh, “only that I would blame myself for letting you be there.”

“Well, then, put that idea out of your head. I
want
to be there. I want to know and experience what you have been through and have to pass through, because only so can you and I be thoroughly one. I have found that we learn to know Christ only as we are permitted to share in His sufferings; only in that way can we be one with Him in His resurrection and triumph. And I think it is so, in lesser degree, in our earthly relations. Unless we are on in our troubles and unhappinesses, and bear them together, how can we possibly be one in our joys? I say it reverently.”

“Oh—you are wonderful!” said Kerry. “You make it almost seem right!”

“Of course I do!” he said joyously. “Now, come, lead me to my new mother, for I’m going to love her as you do whether she is disagreeable or not.

Kerry laughed.

“She’s not unpleasant to look at,” she admitted, “she’s very beautiful. Everybody admires her.”

“One would know that to look at her daughter,” said McNair, drinking in the beauty of the lovely face before him.

“Oh, I’m not beautiful!” said Kerry incredulously, “I’m nothing at all like mother. She is lovely!”

“Well, I’ll tell you whether you’re more beautiful after I see her,” said McNair, smiling, wwwdeandeandess but we won’t tell her. Come now, let us go and get this over with, and then, dear, you and I are going out to get married. Yes, I mean it,” he said as he saw protest in Kerry’s eyes. “I’m running no more risks. I’m going to have the right to stay by you whatever comes. And we’re going to get your mother so interested in our wedding that she won’t have time to be unhappy anymore. This is our job now, yours and mine, to take care of her, since the man she has married seems not be able to make her happy.”

Before she could protest longer, he had her in a taxi, and they were threading their way through traffic toward Mrs. Scott’s. As they went McNair went on planning.

“We’ll let your mother choose where we are to live. We’ll have to give up a honeymoon for the present perhaps, but we’re going to have a good time anyway. What’s a wedding trip! Why, we can make our whole lives into one!”

“You are wonderful!” said Kerry, her face full of deep joy and reverence. “I never knew that a man could be like that! Only my father! He never thought of himself ! And to think—why! I told my heavenly Father this very morning that I would give you up, and here I’m letting you go on and do this. I’m not keeping my promise to God!”

“Dearest, did you never know how God delights sometimes to give us back the treasures we have laid at His feet? I’m not calling myself a treasure, but our united love is, I’m sure of that, a God-given treasure. Now, here we are! Let’s remember we are one, and whatever one wants the other wants, too. And this is our job now, to make that beautiful little mother happy!”

He helped her out and Kerry went upstairs to call her mother, but when she got there she found the room empty.

Startled, she looked around and then ran down to ask Mrs. Scott if she had seen her.

That good woman was wiping happy tears from her eyes with her kitchen apron and rejoicing over the dear lad who had come back again from afar.

“Your mother went out,” said Mrs. Scott. “Yes, she come in here and said she was going and she’d left a note on the bureau for you. She said you would understand.”

Kerry rushed upstairs again to find the note, foreboding in her heart. What had her beautiful little mother done now? She unfolded the note hurriedly.

Kerry read this letter in a daze, read it over twice, gradually taking it in that the trouble was lifted. Her mother, it was true, had gone back to Sam Morgan and separated herself from her, but the way was made clear now for her to live her own life. Had God done that, too? Was it all in His plan?

She went down presently, a kind of wonder in her face and asked what time her mother left.

“Why, the telegram came soon after you went out,” said the woman, “and I should say it was about an hour later that she went. She had me to call the taxi, and asked me for a cup of coffee. She didn’t leave any message except that there was a note for you on the bureau and that she had been called away.”

“She has gone!” said Kerry, looking at McNair with troubled eyes.

“Where?” asked McNair, accepting the note she handed him to read.

“Gone back,” said Kerry, “just as she came, inconsequently. Just as she went in the first place.”

“She’s a bonnie wee lady,” said Mrs. Scott, saying nothing about the way the bonnie wee lady had ordered her around at the last, and demanded her assistance.

McNair read the letter slowly and then handed it back to Kerry, who stood by anxiously.

“It is all a part of the Father’s plan,” he said with a look of more than tenderness. “It will work out all in His good way, and when the next climax occurs we’ll be together to stand by her.” The smile that went with the words swept all of Kerry’s difficulties aside and thrilled her with a joy such as she had never dreamed could be. Her face broke into radiance.

“And now,” said McNair, “when can we have our wedding? Would an hour be too soon? I want to belong!”

“But what about my job?” said Kerry, suddenly remembering her obligations. “I can’t just leave right out of the blue like that!”

“Well, no, I suppose not. But I’ll be lenient. We’ll put that up to Holbrook, and let it work out the best way for all concerned. I want what you want. Need we bother about that today? We have all day today and tomorrow. We might even get in a preliminary wedding trip before Monday if we tried.”

“Well, you’ve got to give me time to get a wedding supper ready,” said Martha Scott anxiously. “I’d never forgive myself if I couldn’t do that for my lad and his bonnie lassie.”

“All right, Martha, we’ll eat it if you’ll cook it, but don’t make it too elaborate. Just some of your nice flapjacks would do, or corn fritters. I haven’t tasted any like them since you left us.”

“Bless his heart! Hear the lad. Well, I’ll run right out to the store and get a few things and I’ll have it ready by the time you are.”

“I’ve got to have a new dress!” said Kerry. “I can’t get married in this old rag.”

“Now, look here, lady,” said McNair, “you can’t get any delays on that score. I’ve waited ages already, and I’ll give you only two hours, and that is all. I’ll have to get the license and the minister, and if I thought I could do it sooner I’d make it less. If you can conjure a new dress in that length of time all right, but anything longer I object to. I’ve seen you in several different kinds of dresses, but I never saw you look prettier than you do at this minute—and—”

Just at that moment the back door slammed. Mrs. Scott had discreetly taken herself to the store, and McNair folded his hungry arms around Kerry and gathered her to his heart for the first time.

Half an hour later they parted from each other in the shopping district, and Kerry dashed into a store and selected two dresses, one a little white silk, the other a lovely green ensemble with a creamy fur collar, which she had admired that morning as she passed the window. Two pairs of shoes, a little green hat, a pair of gloves and some hastily selected lingerie completed her trousseau, and she took another taxi back to the house, with just fifteen minutes left to dress for her wedding. In Martha Scott’s funny stiff little parlor Kerry stood up in her simple white dress and was married by the minister of the church that she and McNair had attended together that first night in New York. Martha Scott in her best black dress, with her hands reverently folded at her waist stood adoringly by and beamed on them both, her dear lad and bonnie lassie. And she was canny enough not to remark: “It’s a pity your bonnie little mother couldn’t have stayed for the wedding.” Martha Scott did not need to be told such things.

After the wedding supper, which was excellent in every detail even to a piece of fruit cake, hurriedly iced, that Martha Scott had kept put away ripening for months, they went unhurriedly away to a quiet unfashionable little town on the coast that had been the delight of McNair in years before. There they spent the first Sunday of their married life. It was a holy and a blessed time to them both.

“I’m so surprised,” said Kerry, Sunday evening when they came in from attending a sweet little country service in the local church, “to find there is real happiness on the earth. Ever since I was a little girl I’ve thought that people could not really be happy on earth. But I’ve been perfectly happy today. The memory of it will be like a beautiful jewel to possess always and carry to heaven with me when I go.”

“You blessed child!” said McNair, taking her into his arms. “Please, God, I shall make it my business to see that you have many more days of happiness if we are spared here. And the best of it is that we are both expecting to spend eternity in the same place!”

They took the very early train into town Monday morning that Kerry might get to her desk on time. The morning papers arrived as the train came in, and McNair bought one from a sleepy village boy who had come down to get them to distribute.

“I wonder how your friend Dawson is,” said McNair as they settled themselves in the train. “You don’t suppose perhaps we should send him announcement cards do you?”

Kerry giggled and gave a little shiver.

“I’m so glad,” she said, “that now I have somebody to stand between me and him.”

A moment later McNair turned to the inside of the paper and exclaimed, “Look here! I guess you won’t need to be protected from Dawson for some time to come. Read that!”