The Flower Brides (28 page)

“
Could
you, Ethan?” beamed Aunt Marian.

“I
could
, and I
will
,” said Ethan. “You see, Aunt Mary, it’s Friday with my job, too. That is, Saturday is only a half day, and I could make up a lost Friday easily on Saturday. Besides, I have to go up to Philadelphia again soon, anyway. I would have to go next week at the latest, and personally I’d prefer to go today, provided I could have good company back. That’s a great inducement, you know.”

“Well, I know Marigold would enjoy it, too,” said Mrs. Brooke gratefully. And she hoped in her heart that she was speaking the truth. If Marigold didn’t enjoy the company of a wonderful young man like this, she ought to be spanked, she thought. “But I don’t think we ought to let you do it,” she added wistfully.

“But if he
has
to go anyway, Mary?” put in Mrs. Bevan.

“All I want to know is,” said Ethan, “would it solve the situation? Or would you still feel uneasy and as if you ought to have gone? Because in that case, I’ll stay with Aunt Marian and let you go.”

“Yes, I think it would solve the situation,” said Mrs. Brooke slowly. “I’d far rather have Marigold here this weekend than at home, and I don’t see why she wouldn’t jump at the chance. It would be wonderful for her and all of us.”

“Wonderful for
me
!” said Aunt Marian softly.

“Then I’ll go!” said Ethan, getting up with determination. “I’ll have to run back to the job for a while, but I’m free at noon or a little after. I’ll stop at the house and see if you’ve any errands you want done at home, a clean apron or anything you want to send for.”

“I could get Marigold on the telephone,” said Mary Brooke meditatively. “Would you like me to, so she won’t plan anything else?”

He considered that an instant and then shook his head.

“No, I think I’d rather appear on the scene unannounced. She wouldn’t have so much chance to think up excuses. I’ll go armed with authority and tell her I have orders to bring her back. Just let it go at that. I’ll get in touch with you by phone if any situation arises in which I need backing.”

Then with a grin he hurried away, and the two sisters settled back to enjoy the morning. Mary Brooke kept praying that her girl wouldn’t have gone and got up some precious engagement with that Laurie that would make her refuse to come to Washington. What silly, unwise creatures girls were sometimes; the Lord arranged nice plans for them, and they already had others of their own.

Then toward noon there came a telegram from Elinor:

“Now that makes it just perfect!” said Mrs. Bevan. “My girl and her husband will be here, too, before you leave, and I can’t imagine anything nearer to heaven on this earth.” There came a lilt in her voice that had not been there before.

So the two went placidly to knitting and talking about old times. Ethan came back for a minute and went again, and the smiles on the two mothers’ faces grew more radiant as the hours went slowly by, full of eager anticipation.

Even out in the kitchen there was a flutter of expectation. Delectable things were being manufactured for the next day’s menu because Miss Marigold was coming back.

But secretly, as the evening drew on, Marigold’s mother kept wondering, would Marigold elect to come? And supposing she didn’t, how would Ethan feel about it? How could she ever apologize for her daughter’s rudeness?

Oh, but she wouldn’t let herself think that Marigold wouldn’t come. She put the thought of Laurie and the plans he might have made to absorb Marigold right out of her mind and tried to trust it all to the Lord.

She had, however, secretly folded her garments and gotten things pretty well packed in her suitcase, in case Ethan should telephone that he couldn’t find Marigold and he was going to have to return without her.

Suddenly her sister spoke.

“He wouldn’t!” she said, right out of a silence.

“What?” asked Mary Brooke, looking up astonished from counting stitches.

“He wouldn’t come home without Marigold,” said Marian Bevan, knitting away hard on the coat that she was making for Elinor. “Isn’t that what you were thinking, dear?”

“Why yes, something like that,” faltered the other, “but how in the world did you know?”

“Oh, you had it written right out plainly across your forehead. You were thinking what if Ethan should come home without her. You were wondering what you would think next. But he won’t. I know Ethan.”

“Well, but suppose she isn’t there? Suppose she’s gone home with one of the teachers to supper and hasn’t left any word? I should have reminded her always to leave word with Mrs. Waterman. Ethan wouldn’t find her if she hadn’t left any word.”

“Ethan
would
find her,” said Mrs. Bevan calmly. “He’s clever. He would find her or he wouldn’t come back till he did. And what’s more, he would telephone before it was late enough for you to be anxious.”

“Oh, of course,” said Marigold’s mother, relaxing into a smile.

“I’ll tell you what we will do, Mary,” said her sister. “There’s nobody near enough to hear. Let’s sing! The servants are down in the kitchen, and the nurse is out. It can’t hurt anybody, and there’s nobody to laugh at us, either. Let’s sing all the old songs we used to sing when we were little girls washing the dishes. You take the alto as you always did, and I’ll take the soprano. Let’s begin on ‘When You and I Were Young, Maggie,’ and go on to ‘Silver Threads among the Gold,’ and ‘Juanita,’ and ‘Bide a “Wee,”’ and a lot of others.”

Mary’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, and ‘Little Brown Church in the Vale,’ too, and ‘Where Is Now the Merry Party, I Remember Long Ago?’ I haven’t thought of them in years. Yes, let’s sing!”

So the two sweet old sisters began to sing. Their voices were still good, though higher and thinner, and with a quaver here and there, but they blended out in the dear old songs they had both loved, and in between each there were old memories to be trotted out.

“Do you remember, Marian, how Randall Silver came in that day while we were singing that and asked for a piece of the chocolate cake Mother had just baked for the church supper that night? The new minister was to be installed, you know—and you
gave it to him
?”

“Yes, and how Betty Hemstead was jealous and baked a coconut cake for him the very next day, and
left the baking powder out
!”

“Yes, and Ran said it reminded him of a pancake it was so thin,” contributed Mary. “How long has Ran been dead, Marian? Almost thirty years, isn’t it? Seems strange we never knew his wife. They said she was sweet. But, Marian, what did Mother say when she found you’d cut her cake before she had a chance to send it down to the church? I don’t remember.”

“Why, she just went and made another,” Marian said, smiling. “That was the deadliest punishment she could have given me. Mother working away patiently and frantically to get that cake done, when I knew she was so tired she was ready to drop. I never did that again. Mother was sweet, you know.”

And then there was a space of silence during which both sisters counted stitches assiduously, brushing away surreptitious tears now and again.

Presently they drifted into more songs. Sweet old hymns now, “Softly Now the Light of Day,” “Abide with Me, Fast Falls the Eventide,” “How Firm a Foundation, Ye Saints of the Lord,” and others, each bringing its set of memories, sweet and sad.

As they sang, they glanced from time to time at the clock ticking away on the mantel and smiled, remembering that it was Ethan Bevan, and not Laurie Trescott, who had gone after Marigold, and that God was with Ethan Bevan. At least that was what Marigold’s mother thought.

Though sometimes, again, she would go over quickly in her mind just how many things had to be put in her suitcase and where she had placed her gloves and coat and hat and purse, in case it became suddenly necessary for her to take the train home that night.

Then Marian Bevan, watching her quietly, would start another song:

It was a song their father used to love, and it brought back the picture of the family gathered at evening for family worship. They sang on through the well-remembered verses:

How many years it had been since they had all sung that together, those two girls and their brothers and parents, all now gone on before them to the heavenly home, except one brother in the far West whom they hadn’t seen for years. Their voices choked as they went on with the other verses:

“And now, Mary, I think you might go and turn on the porch light, don’t you? They ought to be here in about fifteen minutes if they come on the same train you did.”

I
n a quiet, sparsely settled, somewhat obscure suburb of Philadelphia, in a great, massive stone building entirely surrounded by dense foliage, which was now heavily draped in snow, Laurie Trescott thrashed about on a luxurious bed and cursed his male nurse, who was really his jailor.

He had tried all the arts and cajoleries he knew, and these were many, for this was not the first time he had been confined within stone walls for a brief period. No period of confinement, however brief, was to be tolerated, Laurie felt. He had offered bribes, varying in value according as his keeper grew stubborn, regardless of the fact that he was not at present in a position to pay even the smallest. But when it became evident that his parents’ bribe was greater than he could exceed, he had gone on to promises and cunning.

The man, however, into whose charge he had been put, was a knowing man and twice as big and strong as Laurie. He paid no more attention to all this than if Laurie had been a rabbit trying to cajole him.

Laurie had wearied himself by coaxing for liquor, and he was now in torment, as the effects of the liquor taken the last twenty-four hours began to wear off. He was desperate and frantic.

As he lay there thinking back over all he could remember of the time previous to his installment in this bed, gradually a grudge evolved from the vagueness, a grudge against Marigold Brooke. He wasn’t just sure how she became connected with it all, but little by little some of it came back. He had offered to marry Marigold and she had declined. She had deserted him at the altar, as it were. There was a little white house in the snow and a minister. That was it. There had been a sign that said so. He was smoking a long black cigar and he needed a haircut, but he had opened the door cordially and put out a flabby hand. Laurie had told him he wanted to get married and had called to Marigold to come, and she didn’t answer. He went out to get her, and she wasn’t there. He didn’t exactly remember what came next, only there was some snow connected with it, down his neck, and he couldn’t find Marigold. Then he had jumped in his car and somebody ran into him and smashed things up. All Marigold’s fault, and he’d like to get even with her. He thought hard about that, drawing his brows in a frown. He might get married to someone else. That was it. Show her she wasn’t the only girl there was. That would teach her a good lesson. Next time she’d do as he said. Yes, that was it. He’d marry someone else. Now that he knew where that minister lived, he could go back. The minister wouldn’t know whether he had the same girl or not. He would go and get Lily. Lily was a good sport. He remembered when she had lied once in school to keep the teacher from finding out who it was that put chewing gum all around the inside of her hat. Lily would go through with anything if she agreed to. Not that Mara had agreed. She never did anymore. She was getting stubborn. But Lily always agreed to anything he asked. Lily would marry him quick enough. He would marry Lily, and afterward he would call up Mara and tell her he was married and she had lost her chance to be a lady.
Then
she would be sorry.

The excitement of his plan kept him quiet for a few minutes, and the attendant came near with medicine. That was something to put him to sleep, and he didn’t mean to go to sleep. But he opened his mouth and took in the spoonful, keeping it carefully in his cheek as he turned over to his pillow and closed his eyes as if for slumber. It was an old trick he used to do when he was a child and they gave him medicine. He simply let it run softly out of the corner of his mouth into the pillow, and that was the end of it.

He lay very still after he had pretended to swallow the medicine. He knew it was almost time for the attendant’s supper downstairs and that he was anxious to have him go to sleep, so he breathed steadily and tried to snore a little. He was coming into his own rapidly now. He began to think how he was to get out. He knew all the tricks of the place. This was the old side of the building, and the windows were wooden frames, not steel sash. His room was in the end of the building, a large room on the second floor. There were no bars to the windows. It was the policy of the place to put the patients on their honor but also to reinforce that honor by plenty of alert attendants. If one played good-boy and got trusted, it was possible to slip over a trick now and then. Laurie was good at tricks. Even when he was drunk, he was canny. He had practiced tricks on his mother long years now.

But there would be the matter of clothes! His clothes were locked up. He was sure of that. And they never left keys around, no chance of that. He was now in pajamas, pink-and-blue flannel. They hadn’t let him have his silk ones. Well, he would have to scout around and see what was available, but he would go, even if he had to go in pink-and-blue plaid pajamas.

He remembered he had a suit down at the tailor’s being pressed. Maybe more than one, he couldn’t be sure. He could get an overcoat at the tailor’s, too. And there were several places he could borrow money if he once got out. He cocked one eye open toward the window and measured possibilities by the trees. That would be the window that faced toward the garages. There might be a car, or cars, out there. Once in a car, he could make it to the tailor’s without detection, and after that all would be clear sailing.