The Flower Brides (70 page)

“But—it is a long way—” she said with shaking voice. “It must be almost seven miles from here! And—I have to get back again right away to the city with the medicine!”

“That’s all right with me!” said the young man pleasantly. “Just step back here. Wouldn’t you like to lie down in the backseat? You were pretty well shaken up, you know.”

“No, I’m all right,” she said eagerly. “Let’s go quick! Every minute counts. My mother is dying. This medicine is the only hope!”

“I gotta have that
ad
dress, lady. I can’t let ya go without that
ad
dress!” said the policeman insistently.

The young man watched her as she gave the address. Camilla Chrystie, and a street he did not know down in the lower part of the city. He studied her trim, slender young figure, her refined, delicate profile.

“I ought to do something about my car, but I mustn’t stop now,” said Camilla breathlessly as the stranger helped her into his car.

“Look after that car, will you, Officer, till I can get back and see to it?” said the young man, tossing a bill across to the officer behind Camilla’s back.

When they were safely out of the thick of it he turned to Camilla, noting her strained, white face and the horrible anxiety that burned in her dark brown eyes.

“Now,” said the young man pleasantly, “my name’s Wainwright, Jeffrey Wainwright. Which way do we go?”

She gave him brief, crisp directions, as if she had learned them by heart.

“You’re very kind. I ought not to let you, I’m afraid. I’m probably hindering you a lot. But—you know what your mother is to you. There is nobody like your mother, and”—with a quiver of her breath—“and—she’s all I have in the world!”

“Of course!” said Wainwright with tender understanding in his tone, although he did not know. The conjured picture of his own mother showed her as he knew she probably was at that moment, elaborately gowned and playing bridge with a placid fierceness that was habitual to her. She had never been very close to him. He had known his nurses and his governesses, and later his tutors, better than his mother. Yet there was something wistful in his glance as he furtively watched the lovely girl by his side.

“We must get back to her as soon as possible,” he added, speeding up his car.

“I can’t ever thank you enough!” quavered Camilla.

“Don’t try, please. I’m just glad to be doing something worthwhile for once.”

“But I’m probably keeping you from some important engagement,” she said, coming out of her own troubles for an instant and giving a quick comprehensive glance at his handsome face, his immaculate evening attire, and the white gardenia in his buttonhole.

Wainwright stared ahead for an instant silently, then answered her deliberately, thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think it was important. In fact, it wasn’t really an engagement at all, and I shouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be a good thing that you have kept me from it!”

Camilla stared at him, perplexed, faintly perceiving that there were problems and crises in other lives as well as her own.

“I am sure,” she said contritely, “that I am taking you far out of your way.”

“On the contrary,” said Wainwright, “you are taking me in exactly the direction I was thinking of going before I saw your car.”

“Oh,” moaned Camilla, “but you are having to take me away back again!”

“But you see, my way leads back also,” smiled the young man playfully, hoping to relieve the girl’s evident strain. “And you know, it is odd, but somehow since decisions about the evening are taken out of my hands for a time, I am strangely relieved. I wasn’t at all certain about what I ought to do before, but now I am. And I don’t think I ever before had a chance to help save somebody’s life. I somehow think we’re going to win out, don’t you?”

The girl’s eyes in her white face were startling as they looked at him through the darkness.

“Oh, I hope—! I–I’ve been praying—all the way!”

Wainwright gave her a sudden quick glance.

“Well, I’ve never done much praying myself,” he said almost embarrassed, “but I’ll drive and you pray! Perhaps it’ll take them both. But we are out to win. Let’s set our minds to that. Now, is this were we turn?”

They drove on silently for some distance, sitting alertly, watching the road. Wainwright gave her a furtive glance now and then.

“Why don’t you lean back and relax?” he asked suddenly. “You’ve had a shock, and you need to rest.”

But Camilla remained tense.

“Oh, I can’t rest now,” she said with a catch in her breath like a suppressed sob. “I must get back to Mother!”

“But we’ll get back just as quickly if you relax, you know,” he reminded her sympathetically. “It seems hard that you should have had to come away at such a time. I can’t understand how the doctor allowed you to do it! There surely must have been someone else to go. I should think he would have gone himself or sent a special messenger.”

“He couldn’t,” said Camilla, lifting her strained face to his. “He couldn’t leave my mother. And there wasn’t anybody else who could be trusted to go. You see, his office is locked, and there was nobody at home to find the medicine and the instruments he wanted. He had to tell me exactly how to find everything he wanted. He is a very wonderful doctor. He saved my mother’s life once before, you see. He ought to have been called sooner. She wouldn’t let me send for him at first. She thought she was soon going to be better, and she felt we ought not to get in his debt again. He has always been so kind.”

Wainwright considered that. There were people in the world then, well-educated, cultured people, who couldn’t afford a doctor when they were desperately ill!

“But there surely must have been somebody else in the house he could have trusted without taking you away from your mother when she was so ill,” he protested.

“No, there wasn’t anybody in the house but a woman who rooms on the floor above us. She’s staying there to help the doctor if he needs anything while I am gone. She can bring hot water and answer the telephone if I have to call him.”

There was desperation in the girl’s voice again, and he pressed harder on the gas pedal and drove fast, but he could see her white eyes watching every bit of the way.

“This is the street!” she announced at last. “It’s in the middle of the next block, the fourth house on the right-hand side.”

“But there’s no light in the house!” said Wainwright as they drew up to the curb. “Is there nobody there at all?”

“No,” said Camilla breathlessly, “the doctor’s assistant won’t be back until midnight, and his family is away in the south for a few weeks.”

“Well, you’re not going in there alone, that’s certain!” said Wainwright in a firm voice, as if he had been used to protecting this girl for years.

But Camilla was not waiting for protection. Before the car had fully come to a halt she was out, fairly flying up the steps of the house, and was fitting a key into the lock of the door. As Wainwright followed her, he was relieved to see a dignified bronze sign on the house. The girl hadn’t made a mistake in the house, then. It was a doctor’s office.

Camilla’s excited fingers had just succeeded in getting the key into the keyhole as he arrived, and putting his hand over hers, he turned the key and threw open the door.

“The switch is at the right hand!” said Camilla crisply. “The first three buttons he said would light the hall and offices.”

Wainwright found the switch and instantly a spacious hall and doors to the left appeared, and Camilla drew a free breath.

“It’s all right!” she said eagerly. “I was afraid I might have made a mistake in the house or something. But there’s his wife’s picture on the desk and his little girl and boy on the wall. And there’s the package on his desk where he said it would be. You see, it’s some special medicine he had sent away for that might have come after he left this morning. He wasn’t quite sure it had arrived.”

Her voice choked with excitement, and Wainwright looked at her, for the first time seeing her face clearly by the bright light and realizing that she was lovely.

“Is that all you had to get?” he asked, giving a quick interested glance around the office that gave so many evidences of culture and refinement.

“No,” said Camilla, “there’s a leather case, a black leather case, on the desk in the back room or perhaps on the floor by the desk. I’m to bring that. And a big bottle on the highest shelf of the cabinet in the other room. If it isn’t there it may have been put on the inner closet shelf. He may have to be with Mother all night and not have time to get back to his office before he goes to an operation.”

There was a quick catch in her breath at the thought of the possibilities the night might bring forth, but she controlled herself bravely.

They found the bottle and the case without any trouble.

“Now, do we go?” asked Wainwright.

“No,” said Camilla, “I’m to call up first, to make sure there is nothing else he needs.”

Her eyes grew suddenly dark with anxiety, and her hand trembled as she reached for the telephone.

Wainwright watched her again with admiration. The delicate flush that had been on her face as she hunted for the bottle and case had drained away, and her face was white with anguish again as she waited for the doctor’s voice.

“It’s Camilla, Dr. Willis,” she said with that catch like a sob in her voice again. “How is she?”

Wainwright, as he stood near her, could hear the quiet voice of the doctor.

“No worse, Camilla. I think her pulse is a trifle steadier. Did you find everything?”

“Yes, everything.”

“Well, hurry back. I hate to think of you driving all that way and going into an empty house alone!”

“But I’m not alone,” said Camilla shyly, with the shadow of a smile on her lips. “I found a—a kind friend on the way who came with me!” Her eyes sought Wainwright’s gratefully. He smiled back at her, and somehow comradeship seemed suddenly to be cemented between them. It was so odd! Two strangers who never expected to meet again after that evening and yet they seemed somehow well acquainted all at once.

When they had turned out the lights and locked the door, Wainwright drew her arm through his possessive, comforting grasp as they walked back to the car.

When he put her into the car she sat back with a breath of relief.

“She’s no worse!” she said, looking up at him radiantly as he took the wheel again, and now that he knew how she really looked in the light, it seemed a lovely glimpse of her inner self.

“Isn’t that great!” he breathed fervently in almost the same tone of rejoicing she had used. Being glad with someone gave him a new thrill. He had seldom been called upon to experience unselfish joy. In his world you got and you gave mostly for your own pleasure. Now it seemed that he was touching deeper, more vital matters. Sin and danger and trifling with doom could give thrills. He had hovered near enough to each one to understand. But this was new and sweet. He looked at her almost tenderly through the darkness, and then he laid his hand gently for just an instant over her small, gloved one.

“I’m so glad for you!” he said gravely.

“Thank you,” she said brightly. “You’ve been just wonderful! I don’t know how I should have gone through this awful evening without you.”

Then she was silent a minute, thoughtful.

“Was that all true, what the policeman said about my car?” she asked presently. There was a hint of anxiety in her voice, yet her manner was strong, controlled, practical, ready to accept the worst quietly.

“Well, it’s hard to say exactly,” he answered with a quick reserve in his voice. “It did look rather badly beaten up, didn’t it? But usually a good mechanic can do something with almost any car, you know.” He tried to say it cheerfully, although his better sense told him that the little car was beyond help. “Suppose we wait for daylight and expert advice before we try to think about it.”

Camilla sighed. “Yes, but expert advice costs a great deal, and I simply couldn’t afford anything just now, I’m afraid. I shall want to use every cent to make Mother comfortable.”

“Of course!” he seconded her heartily. “But your insurance will cover all that, you know. You had insurance, of course, didn’t you?”

“No,” said Camilla sadly. “I couldn’t. I bought the car for fifty dollars, and it took all I had saved to get the licenses and one secondhand tire it needed.” She ended with a brave little attempt at a laugh.

He was appalled at such details, but he did not let her know it. “Oh well, it will be up to the owner of the truck, anyway,” he said with more assurance than he felt. “Sometimes, of course, they try to slide out of such moral obligations, but you let me handle this. I’ll make it a point to call upon him tomorrow and put the thing before him in the right light. Don’t you worry.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t let you do anything more!” said Camilla in a frightened voice. “You have already done more than any stranger could possibly be expected to do.”

“Is that the way you rate me?” he said reproachfully with a twinkle in his voice. “Only a stranger, after we’ve gone on an errand like this? I thought we were friends now.”

Camilla gave him another look in the darkness, of mingled pleasure and surprise.

“You have certainly taken more trouble than any friend I have would have taken,” she said earnestly. “The truth is, I haven’t many friends in this city. We haven’t been here long, only about nine months. I haven’t had time to make friends.”

“Then you’ll let me count as a friend?” he asked gravely. “At least until your mother gets well and you have time to look me over?”

He smiled down at her through the darkness, and she felt a comforting sense of being taken care of in a sort of brotherly way.

“You certainly do not need any special looking over,” said Camilla gravely, “after the way you have befriended me tonight.”

There was a weary strain in her tone that made him look anxiously at her. It occurred to him that perhaps she had been more hurt in the collision than she would own.

“Are you sure you are all right?” he asked earnestly.

“Oh yes,” she said, rousing again and putting on that forced attention she had worn since they started on their errand.