Substitute Guest (6 page)

So Demeter turned her main attention to what she should put on for the evening, in case he did finally arrive.

But Alan Monteith was not thinking of Demeter Cass just then. He was standing in a long homelike room, with big beams in the ceiling, a great fire blazing on the hearth, and a Christmas tree draped with silver fringe and twinkling lights, that had their counterpart in miniature, in tinkling crystal prisms over the mantel. He was looking down into a girl’s eyes, astonishingly lovely eyes, fringed with the longest, darkest, curling lashes he had ever seen. They seemed like great blue stars shining out through the depths of the pleasant room, twin stars that somehow were a part of Christmas, the tree and the lights and the prisms and the firelight flicker. He blinked the clinging snow from his own eyes and stared down at her for an instant, not yet breathing easily after his wrestle with the storm.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” he gasped, with a winning smile that tried to take in the others in the room as well as this lovely girl. “I’m a pilgrim on my way and something has happened to my car. I couldn’t make out in the blinding snow what is the matter. Would you mind if I telephoned to a garage and asked for help? I’m on a very important errand, and my time is short.”

“Sure, you can use the telephone,” said Lance, “but I’m afraid it will be slow work getting anybody up from the village. They’re crazy-busy, I imagine. A man is coming out in about an hour, though, with a snowplow. Better sit down and warm up till he gets here.”

“Oh, I couldn’t wait an hour. I must get on as quickly as possible. It is most important.”

“All right. I’ll get on my togs and go out and have a look.”

“Oh, I couldn’t think of taking you out into the storm,” protested Alan. “I’m so sorry to intrude. If you’ll just let me telephone.”

“Sure, go ahead! There’s the phone. Call Gates’s Garage. Number’s 92. But I’ll get my high boots on and be ready.”

So Alan Monteith went to the telephone, and the family in the shadows of the room furtively watched his broad shoulders and trim, shapely head, silhouetted against the window. They liked his courteous, troubled voice, and pitied him in this interval of their waiting for their own guests.

But the stranger turned from the phone with a real anxiety in his voice.

“He says they can’t spare anyone now. They have trouble enough. He says he doesn’t know how long it will be. And I must get on at once!” He seemed to be talking more to himself than to the family in the shadowy corners of the room, but Lance appeared, fastening his leather jacket.

“I guess we’ll need a light,” he said, taking down a long powerful-looking flashlight from the hall closet shelf. “Come on. We’ll see what’s the matter. If it’s fixable I’ll do my best.”

“You’re awfully good!” said Alan. “I can’t bear to be making all this trouble. If it were just for myself I shouldn’t allow it, but—”

They were outside now with the door slammed behind them, and suddenly Alan Monteith’s words were snatched from his lips and cast from him into the roaring seething storm.

Lance plunged across the drifted lawn, seeming to know by instinct where to set his foot for sure step, and they arrived wallowing and lurching at the side of the car.

Lance got in and turned on the ignition. Grimly he worked for several minutes, trying to start the car, listening to its helplessness with an experienced ear. Then suddenly he turned off the switch and shook his head at the unfortunate stranger.

“No good!” he shouted in his ear. “You’ve stripped the teeth from the gears in the differential. That’s easy to do with chains on in a snow like this. Come on in and we’ll see what can be done.”

Alan gave a startled, hopeless look at his car, and then turned and plunged after his new friend, wondering what he should do next. As he wallowed through a drift because he hadn’t kept close to his guide he had a sickening sensation of fierce cold hands gripping his thinly clad ankles. Snow in his shoes. Why hadn’t he stopped to put on his galoshes?

The two fought their way back in the teeth of the wind and arrived at last in shelter once more.

“Now,” said Alan, shivering with cold as he stood exuding snow onto the clean linoleum-covered hall, “would you mind saying over again what you told me out there? I couldn’t be sure what you said.”

Lance grinned.

“I said you had stripped the teeth from the gears in the differential. That’s easy to do with chains in a snow like this. Tearing, grinding sound in the rear when it stopped, you know.” And Lance put up his fingers and illustrated the stripped gears. “But the question is what can I do for you? You can’t get that car fixed in a hurry, and not out there in this storm anyway. It’s got to be towed to a garage, and I haven’t even got my own car to help tow you. You’ll have to wait till Bill Gates gets here. Where was it you were going? You’d better stay here all night. This storm is something fierce, and getting worse all the time.”

Alan shook his head.

“It’s impossible. I’m carrying some medicine to a woman who will die if she doesn’t get it. I gave my word of honor. I’ve got to get it there by six o’clock. The doctor said he wouldn’t answer for the consequences if she didn’t have it by then.”

“That’s different!” said Lance suddenly grave. “Of course you have to go. Where is it?”

“It’s to a sort of castle on a mountain. There’s a Mrs. Watt there very sick. It’s her son-in-law’s home. The name is Farley.”

“Not Tom Farley’s big stone house on the cliff!” exclaimed Lance with startled eyes. “Man alive, you couldn’t have got there even if your car hadn’t broken down. Not in a car! It’s ten miles, around by the river road, but I just heard a few minutes ago when I was telephoning that there’s a drift twelve feet high there at one place, that shuts the pass off entirely. They are utterly shut off up there except from this side. There’s only one way to get up there now—and I’m not so sure of it—and that’s by the trail up the mountain, and you have to take it on your feet.”

Alan looked into the other young man’s eyes and seemed to read just what that would man. His face grew white and stern and he looked down for an instant and then up and straightened his shoulders, setting his lips.

“Then I’ll have to take that way!” he said. “I staked my life on it and it’s that woman’s life or mine it seems, so here goes. Show me the way and tell me how far it is.”

He ended with a brave smile.

Daryl in the shadows of the dining room was watching him, comparing him with another, wondering what Harold would have said if confronted by such a demand.

They were all watching him, the mother and the father from the other room, and looking with startled eyes at their own boy, a frightened question in their hearts.

Lance looked at Alan steadily for an instant, and then he answered quietly, “It’s only three miles up the mountain on this side, but it’s a hard climb up the cliff. I’ll go with you, of course.”

“No!” said Alan decidedly. “I couldn’t let you. This is my challenge, not yours. Just tell me the way and I’ll find it.”

“You couldn’t possibly find your way alone, you a stranger. I’ve been born and brought up climbing all over the place. I know every nook and cranny. If anybody can find the way in the dark, I can. I’ve camped up there since I was a kid!”

“But I can’t let you run this risk. It is my duty, not yours!” declared Alan with finality.

“Look here, man, don’t you know that the same thing that makes this a challenge to you makes it binding on me also? There’s a life to be saved up there, and we’re going to save it. Come on. We mustn’t lose a minute of daylight.”

“Yes,” said Father Devereaux, stepping into the light of the fire, his white hair like a halo around this sweet strong face, his fine eyes shining with something almost like exaltation. “Yes, both of you must go, of course, but you’ll have to put on good warm clothing before you start. This friend here is shaking with the cold, and can’t you see his feet are dripping wet? You couldn’t survive a mile in this storm like that. Lance, take him into the spare room and give him some good warm clothes, long woolen underwear, two pairs of wool stockings, high boots, you know what he needs, and you’ve plenty of them.”

“Why, I’ve a few things for sports out in my car,” said Alan, suddenly remembering. “I was prepared for winter sports.”

“Never mind those things!” said Lance sharply. “We haven’t time to wait to unpack the car. Leave it where it is till Bill Gates gets here. Dad, you’ll have him unload it and bring the things in, won’t you? Got your keys, man? Better leave them here. Where’s your medicine? In the car?”

“It’s right here in my pocket,” said Alan soberly, handing over his car keys. “I don’t know what to say to thank you all, and I feel like a criminal letting your son in for this awful climb—” Alan’s voice grew husky with feeling. “I’m Alan Monteith. Here’s my business card. Not that it matters of course, now.”

“That’s all right, son, don’t worry. This is a call of course. We’ll put you both in God’s hands.”

“And I’m Lance Devereaux,” said the other young man with a quick clasp of the stranger’s hand. “Come on now, we’ve got to doll up. Mother, you going to give us a cup of coffee to start on?”

“I’m making the coffee,” said Daryl quietly. “Mother’s gone up to the attic to get some more warm woolens.”

“Come on, then!” said Lance, starting toward the stairs.

“Take Mr. Monteith into the guest room,” said Daryl, coming forward and flinging open the door of the room that was all ready for Harold Warner, and her brother saw as he looked that the fire he had laid there was lit and the room was bright and warm. He flung his sister an inscrutable look and then gave her a blinding smile of appreciation that warmed her heart all during the hours that followed.

“Get those wet socks off, Alan,” said Lance, coming in with a rough Turkish towel, “and rub those ankles till they burn. It won’t do to start off on this expedition with cold feet. There. I guess you can wear those things. I’m about your size. Anyway, we aren’t being choosy about our outfits just now. Haste is the main thing. I’ll beat you to it!” And Lance with a grin strode up to his own room to array himself with swift fingers.

Then the telephone rang in the little hallway just beside Alan’s door, and he could not help hearing most of what was said. He was dressing in strange woolly garments as swiftly as his cold shaking fingers could manipulate them, but he could not help listening eagerly with a wild hope that perhaps the garage man had somehow come to his rescue, impossible as that seemed.

The voice at the other end of the wire was one of those high-keyed, raucous voices, which sometimes on the telephone broadcast themselves more widely than they intend. Every syllable uttered could be clearly heard in the guest room by the guest who was working so frantically to array himself for his daring expedition.

“That you, Darling?” the voice said.

“What? What did you say?”

“I shaid ‘Darling!’ Isn’t that your name, lovely one? Did you shay Daryl meant Darling? Well, there you are!”

“Harold! What in the world do you mean, talking like that? Stop kidding me, and tell me where you are? I’ve been so anxious about you!”

“Angshus about me, Darling? That’s awfully sweet of you! But why angshus?”

There was a puzzled pause and then Daryl’s troubled voice. “How strangely you talk, Harold. What’s the matter with you? Where are you? When will you get here?”

“Me? I’m at Bayport. Called up to say hello.”

“At Bayport? What are you doing at Bayport? Oh, have you had an accident, Harold!”

“Acshident? No, I haven’t had acshident! I’m at a housh party, Darling, at Bayport, my boss’s summer home. My boss’s daughter brought me down in her limousine, and she wantsh you to come, too. She said I might ashk you. She shuggestsh you take a taxi over, econ you can’t get a taxi justsh shay the word and we’ll drive over fer you. Joy ride. Shee?”

“Harold!” Daryl’s distressed voice was raised sharply. She had forgotten the nearness of the stranger. “What
is
the matter, Harold? Aren’t you coming to spend Christmas here?”

“No, Darling. No, I can’t! Had a econd engagement. No, it washn’t econd, it was premature. No, that isn’t the right word either. But you know what I mean. The boss’s daughter asht me, an’ buishnessh always comesh firsht, you know.”

“But Harold, you promised. You said it was our Christmas. Our first Christmas together!”

“Did I shay that? Well, mebbe I did….” The voice trailed off uncertainly and then began again. “Yesh, maybe I did shay that but I didn’t mean it. I meant econd Chrishmus, ur mebbe it wash third…” The voice trailed off again.

“Harold!” Daryl’s voice was full of tears and horror. “You’ve been drinking!”

“What, Darling? Yesh, jusht a dear little bit of a drink! Couldn’t help it, you know. Boss offered it. Boss’s daughter shaid I must. Buishness, you know. Wouldn’t wantta loosh my job. You wouldn’t want me to loosh my job. But, Darling, ef you’ll jusht take a taxi and come over I’ll promish to say no.” The uncertain voice broke into song. “Have courage-my-boyto—shay—noo!”

Daryl suddenly hung up the receiver and when Alan came out of the spare room a moment later she was still standing there, her face white as death, her eyes wide with sorrow. His heart almost stood still with its sympathy for her. But, oh, he must not let her see that he had heard that conversation!

Lance appeared on the scene almost simultaneously, and Mother Devereaux with a sweet brave look in her eyes called them out to the table to get the coffee.

As they sat down Father Devereaux appeared from the kitchen and standing by the table lifted his hand and looking up said, “Father, we commend these two dear boys to Thy care as they go forth into Thy storm and cold on their errand of mercy. Keep them, guide them, and bless them. Bring them safely back to us without mishap if it be Thy will, Amen!”

Alan with quickly bent head listened to every word and felt suddenly as if God were in that house. That was what made it so different from other homes he had been seeing lately. God was there!

He lifted his head and looked at the quite old man, tall and strong, white-haired but glory-faced, and marveled.