The Strange Proposal (7 page)

“You don’t say!” said Uncle Warren. “And what did you do with the big bronze giant? Or are you waiting now for him to come down and play golf or something? I saw you took quite a shine to each other last night. But look out, Mary Liz! He’s a poor man. Jeff told me that yesterday. A poor man and a genius! You should never break the heart of a genius, Mary Liz. It unfits him to be a public benefactor. And besides, I understand Jeff picked him up in a Florida swamp somewhere, and he wouldn’t be your style nor able to go your gait, so I suppose you’re wise to take up with that nice, settled, staid Grandma Farwell. He can give you quarts of diamonds and take you to all the horse shows in the world and keep a general eye on your behavior. For you must own, Mary Liz, that you’re an awful flirt, and I don’t want any of Jeff’s protégés trifled with!”

“Oh, Uncle Warren, aren’t you complimentary!” said Mary Elizabeth with a gay little ripple of a laugh. “As if you didn’t know that it was part of my duties last night to entertain the best man and make sure he had a good time! But you needn’t worry about him, you gorgeous old fraud, you. I understand he’s left for parts unknown and he probably won’t appear on the scene again.”

“You understand! Hmm! You understand!” said Uncle Warren.

“And as for Boothby Farwell,” said Mary Elizabeth coolly, “I’m not looking for an overseer just now, thank you, though I suppose from your point of view I need one badly.”

“Well, forget it, Mary Liz!” said her uncle, patting her cheek. “Had your breakfast? Why don’t you come on in with us? Or are you waiting for some younger man to stroll by and ask you, my dear?”

“I’m waiting for Aunt Clarice to come down. I promised I’d take some of their party in my car, and I’ve got to find out just what she wants of me.”

Aunt Fran patted her hand lovingly and passed on to the dining room with her jocular old husband, and Mary Elizabeth settled down to her paper again.

But she had time to read the paper several times through before the other uncle and aunt appeared, for they were having a discussion while they dressed.

“I liked that best man Jeff selected,” the bridegroom’s father was saying as he stretched his chin to give the last jerk to his tie.

“He was all right,” said Jeffrey’s mother, “only I think it was such a pity he couldn’t have chosen one of his own classmates or someone in our set. It really isn’t worthwhile to go out of your way to hurt people’s feelings. There is Gerry Appleton—Jeff knows his mother is one of my very dearest friends.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it. Jeff only gets married once—I hope—and why in Sam Hill can’t he choose whomever he wants to be his best man? I can’t think of Jeff ever choosing that little sissy of a Gerry, anyway.”

“Really, Robert!” said his wife with dignity. “I don’t understand your speaking that way of a son of an old family. It’s bad enough for Jeff to have chosen a wife from an obscure family, a wife who had to go to work to earn her living, without having him go to the ends of the earth to haul up a nobody for his chief attendant at the wedding.”

“Now look here, Clarice, it’s time you got this thing straight,” said her husband, facing her firmly, with a glance of intensity from under his shaggy white eyebrows. “I told you very clearly that Camilla’s family is just as fine and old as our own, and there have been several men of note in both her father’s and mother’s lines. I think you ought to put that idea out of your head once and for all. She is good and beautiful, and she loves Jeff and he loves her, and that is enough, anyway. It was noble of her to go to work to support her mother when her father’s fortune was destroyed through the wrongdoing of their bankers. Would you have admired her any more if she had settled down on some of her distant relatives to be supported, or let her mother go to a home? Now for Jeff’s sake and for her sake and for all our sakes, you’ve got to put that snobbery away forever. Camilla is just as good as we are. And I’m saying that I liked that best man very much, and I thought you did, too. You said so last night when you told me how much Jeff admired him.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Robert Wainwright. “He was all right. He is very good-looking of course, and appeared quite impressive standing up there by Jeffrey. But I am annoyed at Betty Wainwright that she should have made herself so prominent in his company all the evening. It wasn’t required of her at all. She could have been polite without fairly falling into his arms. We certainly don’t want two of our family going into obscurity for life, do we? Really, I am worried about Betty. Her father lets her have her own way too much. Your brother Samuel always was too easy! You know I said that long ago.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call Mary Elizabeth ‘Betty!” said Uncle Robert in an irritated tone. “Betty!” he snorted. “It undignifies her good old-fashioned name. And as for the way she treated Saxon, I thought it was modesty itself!”

“Oh, yes, you always think everything that girl does is all right. You’re just like Samuel. You haven’t an idea how careful a girl has to be these days. It’s a good thing we didn’t have any daughters, for you would have spoiled them terribly. I shall have to speak to my niece, I’m afraid. She needs a woman’s advice.”

“You let Mary Elizabeth alone!” said her husband. “She’s nice and sweet and good, and she doesn’t need advice. She’s doing well enough bringing herself up. Now, are you ready at last? Where is Sam? Talk about spoiling, I don’t see why you can’t understand you are spoiling Sam, letting him sleep every morning as late as he pleases. He’ll never amount to shucks if he doesn’t learn to get up early in the morning. I’ve threatened him with cutting his allowance, but you always manage to excuse him somehow.”

So they went down to meet their niece, who arose with a smile to welcome them and did seem to justify all that her doting uncle had said of her.

Aunt Clarice gave her an indulgent kiss and surveyed her critically.

“You’re looking a little pale, Betty dear,” she said as they walked together to the dining room. “I do hope your duties last evening as maid of honor were not too strenuous. It was hardly fair of Camilla to ask you that way at the last minute, you having no chance to prepare a special dress or anything. You did very well, of course, but it must have been trying, dear.”

“Oh, not at all, Aunt Clarice,” twinkled Mary Elizabeth, slipping on the armor that she always used in conversation with this aunt. “I had the time of my life. I enjoyed every minute of the evening.”

“Well, that was good of you, but I think, if you ask me, that they might have raked up somebody from their own friends, if they had to have a maid of honor at all, since they didn’t ask you at first. They really should have asked you in the first place, you know, Betty Wainwright! It was quite the proper thing, since Camilla hadn’t seen her own friends in a long time. It is certainly a wonder it all went off as well as it did.”

“Oh, I thought it was beautiful!” said Mary Elizabeth. “And Camilla made such a precious bride. I’m just going to love her, Aunt Clarice!”

“Yes, she did very well,” admitted the bride’s new mother-in-law with a sigh. “It wasn’t what I’d planned for my son, but I think she’ll be all right. Of course, it’s a satisfaction that he’s settled down at last and didn’t do any worse. Jeff always was erratic, you know. But I’m very well satisfied.”

“I thought it was a perfect wedding, Aunt Clarice, with not a thing to be criticized. Those bridesmaids were sweet, and the ushers were all Jeff’s friends, and the best man was a peach! I’d never met him before, you know. How long has Jeff known him?”

“Only just this winter!” said Aunt Clarice with a resigned sigh. “And that was another regrettable thing, of course, though it went off quite smoothly, thanks to your kind offices. He’s only a passing acquaintance that Jeff took an interest in. He’s really nothing but a sort of teacher, or coach—scoutmaster I believe they called him. He took Sam out with a crowd of boys for a camping trip. Jeff went along to see that all was right, and this is the result! But then, Jeff always was so democratic! And Sam just simply lost his head over him. I can’t quite make it out, though I suppose it’s all right, now it’s over anyway, and we’ll likely never see him again. Are you going to have grapefruit or melon, Betty dear? They do have such a limited menu in this rural hotel, though it’s very good what they have, of course, and it did turn out to be quite convenient.”

Mary Elizabeth’s eyes danced. She had found out something more about John Saxon. So Sam was crazy over him! Then perhaps Sam could be made the key to her situation.

“Melon, please!” said Mary Elizabeth and then turned a glowing face to her aunt.

“Aunt Clarice, you said your car was rather full. Why can’t I take Sam with me? I haven’t seen him much since he is growing up, and I’d like to renew my acquaintance with him.”

“Oh, would you want to bother?” asked her aunt thoughtfully. “I don’t know but that might be as good a solution of the problem as any. Sam is always so restless in a car that he makes me nervous. He is always teasing to drive, and of course he can’t. I certainly shall be glad when Sam grows up.”

So Mary Elizabeth finished her breakfast and hastily went in search of her young cousin Sam.

J
ohn Saxon in his upper berth—because it was cheaper and he felt that he should save every penny—tossed about uncomfortably, trying to keep his thoughts on something he had read in a medical journal during his long evening in the railroad station. Finally he threw discretion to the wind and let his thoughts drift back as they would to last evening. Was that perfume, borne to his mind above the stuffiness of sleeper curtains and the rank tobacco fumes from the smoking room? Perfume! Yes, the perfume of her hair as he held her in his arms when they said good-bye. It didn’t assert itself as perfume, just the fragrance of flowers. She seemed a lovely flower herself.

And there he was off thinking about her again! Fool that he was. A rich, worldly Wainwright. Well, at least a Wainwright, and likely worldly, too, in spite of her delicacy and sweetness. And who was he to have presumed? He ought never to have mailed that letter, of course. Very likely she didn’t expect him to write any of the time. Very likely it was just a game with her for the evening, and she would think him an innocent that he kept it up.

Well, the letter was gone, he told his persistent soul that would keep defending her and hurling the lovely thrills of memory at him to prove it. The letter could not be recalled, and he would have had to send one eventually. It was gone, and if she never answered it, it would serve him right and would probably be the best dose of medicine to cure his madness that he could take.

And then he went to calculating how long it would be at the shortest that he could possibly expect an answer. He just hadn’t been himself last night. Well, probably when he got home and got down to good hard work again, he would settle down to sanity as well, and he would take good care never to let himself get caught in social life again. Here he had been always sneering at the follies of the social set and then had fallen as far and as hard as anybody he knew. Fallen in love at first sight and committed himself without knowing a thing about her except her lovely face and manner!

He would get so far and then falter. The memory of that face and manner, even if there had been no words, even if she had not yielded those exquisite lips to his, disarmed every one of his efforts to put her away from his thoughts. She hovered quietly about him, like a lovely, precious atmosphere that breathed balm and healing. And here was he who had always controlled himself, body, soul, and spirit, utterly unable to keep his thoughts away from the dear memory of her!

Well, perhaps in future years the time would come when he could think of her calmly, remember the sweetness of her, without that hungry longing for her, without that fierce desire to possess her for his own. It might be that in the ages to come he would even be glad that he had her safe in his memory, a lovely picture to look back upon, a picture that could never be sullied by human faults and frailties, because he had known her only one brief evening. Even that was more than some men had—an eternal ideal never shattered by everyday living. At least, that much was his if nothing else ever came. Almost he felt like praying that nothing would, that she would somehow be prevented from destroying his beautiful vision of her, that she might never answer his letter rather than answer it with mockery, or worse still, with gentle pity and kindly refusal.

He groaned aloud and rejoiced that the train made so much noise that he might groan again and again and nobody hear but God.

And then suddenly he remembered that he was God’s child in God’s care, and this affair belonged to God—he had put it in the will of God to do with as was best and right. He must not meddle further.

Then softly there came a peace upon him, and he sank to sleep with that breath of fragrance drifting about him, soft arms clinging about his neck, soft lips, sweet lips on his. The memory of her smile! How lovely she had been! How wonderful that it had fallen to his lot to know her even for one brief evening!