The Strange Proposal (21 page)

But the family standards—ah—the conventions! Even though she was fairly broad-minded for the times, her family were great sticklers for the conventions. They were almost Victorian in some things. Suppose, now, that one could plan to get Mary Elizabeth off somewhere in a lonely situation where she would be compelled to stay all night in his company? Would it not be likely that Mary Elizabeth’s father would urge immediate marriage?

But how to get her away, even after the plan was made? Mary Elizabeth was a young woman who knew her own mind and who did what she wished to do.

He drank a great deal that night, and when he finally piloted his merry and irresponsible party back to their homes again, he was ready to entertain almost any measure that would reduce Mary Elizabeth to his terms. The next day he studied his plan again and finally got into his high-powered car and drove back to Seacrest alone.

It wasn’t conceivable that Elizabeth would refuse to see him, nor that she would not accept his apologies for anything that might have been done to annoy her yesterday. It could easily be blamed on someone else in his party. He would have no trouble in persuading her that everything disagreeable he had done had been because of his state of mind, because of his frustrated love for her. For after all, Mary Elizabeth Wainwright was a gentle, kindly soul and did not like to hurt people. Perhaps he might even come to confessing a weakness or two, a little sentiment, which wasn’t his natural line. It might even be that she was holding him off, playing for something of this sort. He had been going with her for so long that perhaps she felt he had come to take things too much for granted. Well, he could give her sentiment, romance, if that was what she wanted. He knew how. He had had large practice in the past, before sentiment and romance walked hand in hand out of the picture of modern times.

As he drove along in the brightness of the morning he was making shrewd, sinister plans. He would try romance and utter desperate, fervent pleas to her, and if that failed, then he would be abject before her, touch her pity, until she would finally promise to go and take a last ride with him before he left for parts unknown to solace his broken heart.

Once get her in his car and out of the town where people knew her, and his car would do the rest. He knew a lonely place where they could be stranded for the night while he pretended to work on his car.

The devilish scheme grew in his mind as he tore along the highway, bearing south and east, arriving at Seacrest an hour sooner than he had expected.

As he came in sight of the Wainwright estate, its tall plumy pines shut in by the handsome iron grille, he was reminded of the last time he had seen it, when he had had a vision of an imp of a boy in a bright red bathing suit striding down to the beach.

He was instantly on his guard, instinctively slowed down his speed, and considered. He must reconnoiter. It would not do to come on that kid. He was clever. He would suspect something perhaps and make trouble!

So he traveled cautiously about the town, approaching the Wainwright place from different angles, but saw no sign of anybody about, and the vista of the beach was free from bathers. No red bathing suit loomed on the prospect.

He had to ring at the entrance gate, however, as all the approaches to the house were firmly locked with formidable chains. It annoyed him to have to ring for entrance. He was full of impatience. Now that he was here he was anxious to carry out his plan at once. As he sat in his car awaiting admission, he told himself he must proceed cautiously, with a friendly attitude, as if nothing had annoyed him at their last meeting. Elizabeth had always been friendly enough if approached diplomatically. He must remember that and not lose his temper. But once get her married to him, and he would break her will and stop her happy independence! He set his lips together in a thin, hard line, and a glitter came into his eyes. He was certainly going to enjoy breaking Elizabeth’s will and putting her through training, once he really had her fast!

But when Susan arrived a little hurriedly because of having waited to put on a clean apron, he learned that Elizabeth was not there.

“They’ve gone!” said Susan, with perhaps a bit of satisfaction in her voice, for she recognized the man and the car, and she had not liked the man. She thought he was not a gentleman.

“Gone?” said Farwell blankly. “You mean she is out? When will she return?”

“No, sir, she’s gone away. I couldn’t say when she’s coming back. She said she’d let me know.”

“When did she go?”

“Night before last.”

“Oh! You mean she has gone back to the city, to her home?” What a fool he had been not to try her home first. Of course she wouldn’t be likely to stay long in a little backwoods place like this.

“I couldn’t say, sir,” said the well-trained servant. “She didn’t tell me her plans. She just went away and said she would let me know when she was coming back.”

“Well, surely you know whether she is likely to come soon.”

“She might, and then again she mightn’t. She didn’t say.”

“That seems very strange,” said the man, giving her an ugly look. “I suppose you are holding out for money, but I’d have you to understand that I shall report this to Miss Wainwright. Perhaps you do not know that I am going to marry her. But here, take this, and give me her present whereabouts, or her address or something, or it will go hard with you later.”

Susan drew back from the offered bill, and her chin went up angrily. She stepped back inside the gate and closed it with a click, letting down the bar that held it from intruders.

“I’ve no address to give you, and I don’t want your money, no matter who you are. I know my duty and I’m doing it. I’m earning my money. I don’t take it in bribes. I have nothing more to tell you!” And Susan, tossing her head, walked indignantly away from the gate, and no amount of subsequent ringing of the gate bell could induce her to make her appearance again.

At last the man who always got his way turned his car toward the microscopic town of Seacrest and invaded the post office, confident that money would give him the lady’s present address. She must have left word to have her mail forwarded.

But he discovered to his amazement that here was at least one honest servant of the government, for the little, round, sturdy postmaster shook his head.

“Can’t do it, sir, it’s against the law. If you wantta leave a letter here with her name on it, I’ll address it and forward it to her, but the law says I can’t give out addresses.”

Farwell tried more money, but the government official remained obdurate, and at last Boothby Farwell shook the dust of Seacrest from his feet and departed at high speed for the city.

In the early evening, having attired himself for an evening call, he arrived at the Wainwright home. But the butler said Mr. Wainwright had gone to New York and Miss Wainwright was away somewhere. When he pressed the old servant for more explicit directions, the old housekeeper was called upon and vouchsafed her young lady was spending the summer at Seacrest.

When Farwell said he had been to Seacrest and that she had left there, she shook her head.

“She’s down in Florida somewhere visiting a sick friend,” she said, “but I don’t know the address. She had her cousin Sammy with her. Mebbe Mr. Robert Wainwright would know.”

So, growing angrier and angrier, Boothby Farwell drove over to Robert Wainwright’s home and rang the bell with vigor.

The second maid who answered the bell didn’t know anything about the young master Sam’s whereabouts, and while she went to ask, Farwell lingered in the hall, tramping impatiently up and down. Suddenly his eye was caught by a pile of letters on the hall table, and right on the top was one addressed to Master Samuel Wainwright, care of Dr. John Saxon, with a Florida address.

Farwell whipped out his notebook and jotted it down before the maid’s tardy return with word that nobody knew anything about young Sam, and got himself out of the house with brief courtesy.

His car shot out down the street toward his own apartments. Arriving there, he sent for his chauffeur and gave orders that the car should be looked over and conditioned for a long drive, sent for his man, and finding him gone for the evening, himself filled a bag with a few necessities, scribbled a few directions, called up a few people and excused himself from a few engagements, and inside of two hours was on his way on the highway, under a brilliant moon, his car headed toward the south. As he rode he made his plans—definite, detailed, and devilish. Little gadabout! Playing fast and loose with him! She needn’t think she could escape him this way! He would get her, and get her good and fast.

He thought of her happy eyes with that starry look in them in which he had no part. It galled him to think that she could exist so easily without him. She was playing with a high hand and thinking likely to bring him to her feet in utter subjection at last, but she would never do that! He would conquer her. And when he did, he would take it out of her for every bit of trouble he had taken to find her and bind her.

Bind her! That’s what he would do! Bind her and show her who was her master!

In the night, in the moonlight, as he shot southward, his eyes glittered with a baleful light. He was planning how he would woo her with something more deadly than diamonds. He would woo her and make her pay a hundredfold for all she was doing to him now. She had dared to put some other one’s trifling interests above his, running away again from the honor he would have put upon her. No girl in her senses would really intend to do that permanently, of course. She was just enjoying the game of tantalizing him. And this was now the third time she had done it. Once she had run to Paris with her father, once to Egypt with a party of friends. Now she was running to Florida in the summertime on pretense of seeking a friend! A friend in Florida in summertime! How absurd!

He would catch her and carry her off, and make her pay, pay, pay!

And so, an Avenger, he rushed on through the night!

A
hot, hot morning in Florida with a burning blue, serene sky, relentlessly bright and hot after the blessed coolness of the night.

The sun looked down unflinchingly upon its ally the white, white sand, which burned back smilingly from every white-hot particle of sharpness and radiated the shimmering heat waves that rose from the earth in visible, quavering wreaths.

The long gray moss hung straight and limp like an outworn ancient garment, not a quiver of breeze to disturb its ghostly draperies. The orange trees only stood shining and bright in their glossy foliage, a few golden discs left from the winter work, a stray gracious blossom here and there filling the air with heavy musky sweetness, the hot, shimmering, still air.

Out in the town that in winter had been so energetic and sumptuous, tall palatial buildings with hot red-tiled roofs and picture palms towering above them stood with closed eyes, a dead place, with all its bustling fled. A wide, bright, lonely ocean stretching away to emptiness lay beyond.

Out in the empty streets where few humans remained to walk, little shadowy lizards slithered, and paused at the approach of any, to turn to background, motionless till the interloper passed. Out beyond the town, to isolated little bungalows among the orange groves, narrow boardwalks, hot and strangely resonant, spanned the sand, and more little lizards scuttled in and out the wide cracks between the narrow boards so much like ladders set on stilts. Little blue chameleons lay basking on hot fences or neatly stacked piles of wood, their little white vests palpitating as they surveyed an interloper with their mild, intelligent, bright eyes, pretending by their very stillness to be only a bit of the fence or the woodpile, changing their color imperceptibly to that of their resting place.

Not a cloud in the sky, and yet before an hour it might rain a downpour, as if the very floor of heaven were drawn out to let fall a solid chunk of water that would cease as suddenly as it came and cause the steam to rise from all the blazing points of hot, white sand and hurry back to the clouds again, to get ready for the next downpour. It is a game they play, the clouds and the sun, in this hot, bright, intermittent rainy season. Another hot, hot day like those intolerable ones that have preceded it! If it were not for the blessed coolness of night, it would be unbearable.

John Saxon came to the door and stared out at the bright shimmer of the world. His face looked old with anxiety, worn with weariness. It somehow seemed that, strong and young though he was, he had reached the limit. His eyes were too heavy to stay open. He turned and stepped back into the room and dropped into a chair, his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees. Tears stung his eyes. Must he give up the fight with death, give up because he was not able of himself to cope with the disease? He groaned within himself.

“God, it is not that I will not give her up if You want to take her. It is that I must see her suffer when I know that she could be relieved if I only had the skill. Oh, God! Must she go this way?”

His soul was filled with anguish! Father, too, suffering deeply and unable to get about and help! It seemed as if everything had come upon them at once. The hard winter and the small crop of oranges, smaller, of course, because they had not had the money to put into fertilizers and cultivation for the grove. His father, working too hard, always! He recalled how he had found his father in the grove, nearly fainting with the pain of his broken ankle; how he discovered that the laborer who had been hired had failed them, and there seemed no other available, so his father had been going out as soon as it was light and working without breakfast because he feared to wake Mother if he stopped to eat. Also, Mother would have protested against his hard work. Mother and Father, saving and scrimping without his knowledge, that he might have the more to pursue his studies! Oh, it was all a confused tangle! Perhaps he ought never to have tried to study medicine. Perhaps he should have stayed at home and cared for them and spent his days in cultivating oranges.