The Strange Proposal (3 page)

He handed it forth reluctantly. It seemed he was giving up one of the slender links that bound them.

“I’ll have it ready for you when you come down.” Her smile was bright. “You have to go upstairs with Jeff, don’t you? Well, I’ll be waiting over there by the alcove, and—you know
I’m
driving you to the station afterward, so don’t go and order a taxi or anything. That’s the business of the maid of honor after her duties for the bride are done. She has to look after the best man, you know. That is, when he needs looking after.”

She slipped away up the stairs with one of her sparking glances, and looking after her he had to own to himself that he actually wasn’t sure yet whether she was only playing a game with him or had taken his words seriously. Nevertheless, he went to Jeff’s room with something singing down in his heart.

So while the guests were waiting below to play the usual bridal tricks on the departing couple, with a sentinel stationed at every hotel exit, Camilla, with the help of her mother and Miss York, their friend, got out of her bridal array and into the lovely, simple going-away outfit. She calmly kissed the women good-bye, including Mary Elizabeth, who had slipped in a minute before and now stood holding the precious orchids.

“But what are you going to do with your bouquet, Camilla?” she asked. “You can’t go away without the time-honored ceremony of throwing your flowers for the bridesmaids to catch.”

“You’ll have to do it for me, new cousin,” said Camilla, smiling. “Or perhaps you’ll prefer to keep them yourself. If they bring any good luck, I’d rather you’d have them, Mary Elizabeth, dear! I’m going to love you a lot.”

Then Camilla put on a stiff, white, starched nurse’s smock and a tricky little cap, tucking her own soft hat under the big blue nurse’s cape. She stepped to a door connecting with another suite of rooms, unlocked it, and stood a moment looking at them all with happy eyes.

“Good night!” she said, sweeping them a courtesy.

“But, Camilla, where are your bags?” said Mary Elizabeth.

“Safe in our car and waiting for us in a little village three miles from town. Jeff saw to all that. Good-bye, and it’s up to you, Mary Elizabeth, to go down and announce that I’ve fled and you’ve found nothing but my bouquet, and therefore it’s yours, because you found it first.”

And with another smile and a kiss blown at them all, she turned and went into the other room, closing the door behind her. Nurse York swiftly locked it after her, and the three conspirators hurried downstairs by devious ways, looking most innocent.

No one noticed a nurse with a tray of dishes slip out of the end room and hurry down the servants’ stairs.

Down at the back of the building, the caterer’s car was drawn up for hampers of silver and dishes to be stowed away, and two young men in chef’s linen coats and aprons stole through the basement kitchens with the nurse behind them. They slipped into the back of the caterer’s car; that is, one young chef and the nurse slipped in, and one chef stayed behind. And not even the careful watchers in the yard had a suspicion. The back door of the car was slammed, and a driver got into the front seat and put his foot on the starter.

“Oh, by the way,” said John Saxon, slipping up again to the little window at the back of the car, “I liked your Miss Foster a lot. Thanks for helping me to meet her!”

“But you didn’t meet her,” giggled the young woman in the nurse’s uniform.

“Oh, but I did,” said John heartily. “We didn’t mind a little thing like that. We introduced ourselves!”

“Oh, but you didn’t,” cried the soft voice again. “She wasn’t there at all!”

But the driver had put his foot on the starter and the car clattered away, and John was none the wiser for that last sentence.

He stole back through the servants’ corridors, rid himself of his disguise, and mingled again with the guests unobtrusively.

“Oh, hello!” said someone presently. “Here’s the best man! Where are they, Mr. Saxon? Which way are they coming down?”

“Why, there isn’t any way but the elevator, is there?” said John innocently. “Jeff was all ready when I left him.”

There was excited gathering of guests in little groups, then the appearance of the bride’s mother, smiling and a bit teary about the lashes, brought about a state of eager intensity. The elevator came and went, and there was a dead silence every time it opened its noisy doors to let out some guest of the house. They all stood in the big entrance hall clutching their handfuls of paper rose leaves and rice and confetti. Outside the door stood a big car belonging to Mr. Warren Wainwright, understood to be the going-away car, well decorated in white satin ribbons and old shoes and appropriate sentiments, but time went on and nothing happened!

“I’m going up to see what has happened!” announced Mary Elizabeth, when excitement grew to white heat and suspicion began to grow into a low rumble of anxiety.

She stepped into the elevator and disappeared, and a breath of relief went up from the guests.

Then Mary Elizabeth descended again with the great bouquet of white orchids in her hand! The bouquet that every one of those four bridesmaids had so longed to be able to catch for herself!

And when they saw the orchids, it did not need Mary Elizabeth’s dramatic announcement—“She’s gone! And I’ve got the orchids!”—to tell what had happened.

A howl went up from the disappointed tricksters, and if it had been anybody else but Mary Elizabeth with her bright, friendly smile, she might have been mobbed.

But Mary Elizabeth had disappeared in the excitement and slipped up to her room, and by the time the guests had begun to drift away, she appeared with a long dark wrap over her arm, jingling her key ring placidly, with no offending orchids in sight. When John came back after seeing Camilla’s mother to her room as he had promised Jeff he would do, there she was sitting demurely in the alcove, the long satin cloak covering her delicate dress, and her eyes like two stars, waiting for him.

It thrilled him anew to see her there and meet her welcoming smile, just as if they had been belonging to each other for a long time. Even in the brief interval of his absence he had been doubting that it could be true that he had found a girl like that. Surely the glamour would have faded when he got back to her.

But there she was, a real flesh-and-blood girl, as lovely in the simple lines of the soft black satin cloak as she had been in the radiant rosy chiffons.

She had taken off her gloves, and he thrilled again to draw her hand within his arm as they went out to the car.

The doorman put his bags in the back of the car, and Mary Elizabeth drove away from the blaze of light that enveloped the whole front of the hotel. They were alone. Really alone for the first time since he had seen her! And suddenly he was tongue-tied!

He wanted to take her in his arms, but a great shyness had come upon him. He wanted to tell her what was in his heart for her, but there were no words adequate. Each one, as he selected it and cast it aside as unfit, seemed presumptuous.

John Saxon had a deep reverence for womanhood. He had acquired that from the teaching of his little plain, quiet mother. He had a deep scorn for modern progressive girls with bloody-looking lips, plucked eyebrows, and applied eyelashes. Girls who acquired men as so many scalps to hang at their belts, who smoked insolently and strutted around in trousers, long or short. He turned away from such in disgust. He hated their cocksure ways, their arrogance, their assumption of rights, their insolence against all things sacred. He had had a great doubt in his mind about even Camilla until he had seen her, watched her, talked with her, proved her to be utterly unspoiled in spite of her wonderful golden head and her smartly plain attire.

And now to find another girl with beauty and brightness and culture, who assumed none of the manners he hated, almost brought back his faith in true womanhood. Certainly he reverenced this girl beside him as if God had just handed her to him fresh out of heaven.

“Well,” said Mary Elizabeth presently as she whirled the car around a corner and glided down a wide street overarched with elm trees, “aren’t you wasting a great deal of time? Where are all those things you were going to say and didn’t have time for while we walked down that aisle?”

“Forgive me,” he said. “It seemed enough just to be sitting by your side. I was trying to make it seem real. I wasn’t quite sure but I might be in a dream. Because you see, I was never sure whether my dream of you through the years would be like this when I found you—
if
I found you!”

“That’s one of the nicest things anybody ever said to me,” said Mary Elizabeth softly, guiding her car slowly under the shadow of the elms.

“I suppose scores of men have said nice things to you,” John remarked dismally.

“Yes,” said the girl thoughtfully, “a great many. But I’m not sure they were always sincere. Their words didn’t always please me. Yours do. You know it’s rather wonderful to find someone that doesn’t have to be chattered to in order to feel the pleasant comfort of companionship. Even if I never see you again, we’ve had a lovely evening, haven’t we? I would never forget you.”

John started forward and closer to her, looking in her face.

“Is that
all
it means to you?” he said searchingly.

“I didn’t say it was,” said Mary Elizabeth with a dancing in her eyes that gleamed naughtily even in the dark as she turned toward him. “I shouldn’t prevent your seeing me again, of course, if you want to. I only said, even if I never saw you again, I wouldn’t forget that we’ve had a most unique and wonderful evening. You must remember that I have no data by which to judge you, except that presumably you are one of Jeff’s friends. Remember I’ve just arrived on the scene this morning, and not a blessed soul had time enough to gossip about you!”

“They wouldn’t,” said John ruefully. “There isn’t enough to say. But I was presumptuous, of course, to dare say what I did right out of the blue. I’m only a plain man, and you may be bound irrevocably to someone else.”

“I told you it was not final!” said Mary Elizabeth, driving smoothly up to the station and stopping the car.

“Yes,” said John, giving a quick startled look out at the station. “Yes, you said it was not final, but you gave me no hope that you would listen to me.”

“But I listened to you!”

“But you didn’t give me an answer.”

“Did you expect an answer?”

“I don’t know,” said John in a low tone. “I wanted one.”

“Just what did you say that needed answering?” Mary Elizabeth’s tone was sweet and courteous, and also the tiniest bit reserved.

“Why, I told you that I love you, and I asked you to marry me!”

“Did you?” said Mary Elizabeth, still sweetly and innocently. “I wasn’t sure. I thought I sort of dragged that out of you!”

He looked up quickly at her and caught that starry look in her eyes, and yet was there a twinkle of mischief, too? Could it be that she was still making fun of him, able to hold her own until the end?

“You surely didn’t expect me to tell you that I loved you, going down a church aisle at another girl’s wedding, did you?”

There was still the twinkle in her eyes, but there was something dear and tender in her voice, as if she were talking to the little boy he used to be long years ago when he dreamed her into his life someday in the far, far future.

“You couldn’t, of course. I wouldn’t expect you to feel the way I do,” said John humbly.

“I’m not saying how I feel,” said Mary Elizabeth, with her head held high. “But even if I feel it, you surely wouldn’t expect me to blurt it out that way right before the assembled multitude, would you?”

“No, I suppose not!” said John in a very dejected tone.

“As for marrying, people always have to have time to think that over, don’t they?”

“I suppose some people do. I didn’t!”

“But you should have, you know,” said Mary Elizabeth, still in that sweet tone in which one imparts knowledge to a small boy, very gently.

“I’m glad I didn’t!” said John quite suddenly, with a firm set of his jaw in the dark, that Mary Elizabeth could see because his profile was perfectly outlined against the bright light of the station platform.

“Yes, and so am I!” said Mary Elizabeth with an upward fling of her chin, ending in a little trill of a laugh with a lilting sound in it. “John Saxon, here comes your train, and you have to get your bags out! Do you really
have
to go tonight?”

“Yes, I really have to go!” said John through set teeth, giving Mary Elizabeth one wild look and springing out of the car.

He dashed to the back of the car, opened it, slung his bags down, gave a furtive glance down the track at the great yellow eye of light that was rushing toward them so speedily to part them, and before he could look into the car for a hasty farewell, he found Mary Elizabeth beside him.

“You haven’t given me your address,” he said breathlessly, measuring the distance of the track with another glance. “Tell me quick!”

“Here it is,” she said, slipping a small white envelope into his hand. “When am I—? When are you—? I mean—you’ll let me hear from you sometime?”

Her voice had a little shake in it, but she was looking steadily up with that brave smile on her lips—no, it wasn’t a mocking smile, he decided. His eyes lighted.

“I’ll write you tonight, at once!” he said. “Oh, I’d give anything if I only had another hour. How I have wasted my time!” He looked down at her tenderly.

“Yes,” she said sweetly, “you have, perhaps, but it was nice anyway, wasn’t it?”

He caught his breath at the sweetness of her voice and longed to catch her and hold her close, but dared he, now, without knowing how she would take it? His own reverence held him from it. And the train was slowing down a few steps away.

“Oh!” he breathed. “I love you!”

“But—” said Mary Elizabeth with a wistful little lifting of her lashes and that twinkle of a glance, “aren’t you even going to kiss me good-bye? Just friends often do that, you know!”

But the words were scarcely out of her mouth before his arms went eagerly round her and he laid his lips on hers.