The Beloved Stranger (26 page)

The lovely color flooded into her face, and joy was in her starry eyes. That pinched look of suffering that Copeland had seen in her face the first night was gone. He looked again and again to make sure. It was not there anymore. The glance in his eyes when he turned toward her always with that wonderful smile thrilled her as nothing had ever done before.

In vain she chided herself for feeling so utterly glad just because of his presence. He was only making a call, she told herself. But that gladness would keep surging over her like a healing tide that was washing away the pain and anguish she had received the night she found out that Carter was false to her. He might go away in a few minutes and she never see him again perhaps, but still she would be glad, glad that he had come tonight and reassured her that he was just what she had thought him at first. New strength and life and hope seemed to come to her as the moments flew by.

Aunt Pat took herself off upstairs for a few minutes to hunt for a book they had been talking about, and Sherrill had a little time alone with him.

“You are feeling better?” he said in a low tone, coming over to sit beside her on the couch, scanning her face searchingly.

“Oh yes,” she said, deeply touched at the tenderness of his tone. “I’m beginning to see some reasons why it all had to be. I’m beginning to understand what I was saved from!”

He reached out and laid his hand quietly over hers for an instant with a soft pressure.

“That is good to know!” he said gently. “You were very brave!”

“Oh no!” she said, her eyelids drooping. “As I look back, I’m so ashamed at the way I played out. It was dreadful the way I let you stand by and go through all that awful reception! But I’m so glad to have this opportunity to really thank you for what you did for me that night. As long as I live I will always feel that that was the greatest thing any man ever did for any woman in trouble. An utter stranger! You were wonderful! If you had been preparing all your life for that one evening, you could not have done everything more perfectly.”

“Perhaps I had!” he said very softly, his fingers closing about hers warmly again, his eyes catching hers as they lifted to look wonderingly at him, and holding her gaze with a deep sweet look.

Then suddenly Gemmie appeared at the door with her rubber-silent tread bearing a small table and placed it, covering it with a festive cloth. Gemmie, seeming to see nothing, but knowing perfectly, Sherrill understood, about those two clasped hands between them there on the sofa.

Gemmie brought coffee in a silver pot with delicate cups and saucers, tiny sandwiches, cinnamon toast, little frosted cakes, and then an ice. Gemmie managed to remain nearby until Aunt Pat returned with her book.

Gemmie watching like a cat!

And the two talked, pleasant nothings, conscious of that touch that had been between them, conscious of the light in each other’s eyes, glad in each other’s presence, getting past the years of their early youth into a time and place where there was only their two selves in the universe. Wondering that anything had been worthwhile before, thinking, each, perhaps, that the other did not understand.

Aunt Pat came back with her book and ate with them, a happy little meal. She watched her girl contentedly, watched the young man approvingly, and remembered days of long ago and the light in a boy-lover’s eyes. That was the same light, or else she was mightily mistaken.

Then all at once Copeland looked at his watch with an exclamation of dismay and sprang to his feet.

“It is almost time for my train!” he said. “I wonder what has become of my taxi! The man promised to be here in plenty of time.”

“Gemmie! Look out and see if the taxi is there!” called Aunt Pat.

“No, ma’am, there’s no taxi come. I been watching out the window!” said the woman primly with a baleful look at Copeland as if his word was to be doubted. Gemmie thought he likely hadn’t told the taxi man to come at all. She thought he likely wanted to stay all night.

“It isn’t far; I’ll try to make it!” said Copeland. “I’m sorry to leave in such a rush. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?

I’ve had such a wonderful time!”

“Why, I’ll take you, of course,” said Sherrill, suddenly rousing to her privilege. “My car is right outside. Come, out this side door. We’ve time enough.”

“But you’ll have to come back alone!” he protested.

“I often do!” she laughed. “Come, we can make it if we go at once—although I wish you could stay.”

“But I mustn’t!” said Copeland. “I must get back at once. It’s important!”

He took Aunt Pat’s hand in a quick grasp.

“You have been good to let me come!” he said fervently. “May I come soon again?”

“You certainly may!” said Aunt Pat. “I like you, young man! There! Go! Sherrill’s blowing her horn. You haven’t any time to waste!”

With an appreciative smile he sprang to the door and was gone. Aunt Pat watched them drive away and then turned back with a smile of satisfaction to see Gemmie standing at the back of the hall like Nemesis, looking very severe.

“That’s what I call a real man, Gemmie!” said Aunt Pat with a note of emphasis in her tone.

“Well, you can’t most always sometimes tell, Miss Patricia,” said Gemmie primly with an offended uplift of her chin.

“And then again you can!” said Aunt Pat happily. “Now, Gemmie, you can wait till Miss Sherry comes back, and then lock up. I’m going to bed.”

Out in the night together Sherrill kept the wheel.

“I’d better drive this time,” she explained as she put her foot on the starter. “It will save time because you don’t know the way. You be ready to spring out as soon as I stop, if the train is coming.”

Sherrill flashed around corners in the dark and pulled up at the station a full two minutes before the train was due.

“I have my ticket, and my baggage is checked in the city,” said Copeland, smiling, “so this two minutes is all to the good.”

He drew her hand within his arm, and they walked slowly up the platform, both conscious of the sweetness of companionship.

“I’m coming back soon,” said Copeland, laying his free hand softly over hers again. “Your aunt said I might.”

“That will be wonderful!” said Sherrill, feeling that it was hard to find words to express her delight. “How soon?”

“Just as soon as I can get a chance!” he said, holding her hand a little closer in his own.

Then they heard the distant sound of the train approaching and had to turn and retrace their steps down the platform.

“I’ll let you know!” he said.

Somehow it took very few words to complete the sweetness of the moment. The train thundered up and they stood there waiting, her arm within his.

“I wish you were going along,” he said suddenly, looking down at her with a smile. “It’s going to be a long lonely journey, and there is a great deal I would like to talk to you about, but we’ll save it for next time.”

The train slowed down to a stop, and the few passengers from up the road came straggling out.

Copeland and Sherrill stood back just a little out of the way till the steps should be passable, and as they looked up, Mrs. Battersea hovered in sight through the car door, coming back from an evening of bridge with some friends in the next suburb.

“Isn’t that your Battledore-and-shuttlecock lady of the reception?” murmured Copeland with a grin.

Sherrill giggled.

“Mrs. Battersea,” she prompted.

“Yes, I thought it was something like that.”

The lady brought her heavy body down the car steps and arrived on the platform a few feet from them.

Copeland stooped a little closer and spoke softly: “What do you say if we give her something to talk about? Do you mind if I kiss you good-bye?”

For answer Sherrill gave him a lovely mischievous smile and lifted her lips to meet his.

Then Mrs. Battersea, the conductor just swinging to the step of the car and waving his signal to the engineer, the platform and all the surroundings, melted away, and heaven and earth touched. The preciousness of that moment Sherrill never would forget. Afterward she remembered that kiss in comparison with some of the passionate half-fierce caresses that Carter used to give, kisses that almost frightened her sometimes with their intensity, and made her unsure of herself, and she knew this reverent kiss was not in the same world with those others.

With that sweet tender kiss, and a pressure of the hand he still held, he left her and swung to the lower step which the conductor had vacated for a higher one as the train rolled out of the station.

He stood there as long as he could see her, and she watched him, drank in the look in his eyes, and suddenly said to her frightened happy heart, “He is dear!
Dear!
Oh, I love him! I
love
him! He is no longer a stranger! He is beloved! The Beloved Stranger!”

Then as the train swept past the platform lights into the darkness beyond, with her heart in her happy eyes, she turned, and there stood Mrs. Battersea, her lorgnette up, drinking it all in! Even that last wave of the hand that wafted another caress toward her before he vanished into the darkness!

Sherrill faced her in dismay, coming down to earth again with a thump. Then with a smile she said in a cool little tone, “Oh, Mrs. Battersea! You haven’t your car here. May I take you home?”

And Mrs. Battersea, bursting with curiosity, gushed eagerly, “Oh, Sherrill Cameron, is that really you? Why, how fortunate I am to have met you. I’ve just twisted my ankle badly, and my chauffeur is sick tonight. I expected to take a taxi, but there doesn’t seem to be any.”

Then as she stuffed herself into Sherrill’s little roadster, she asked eagerly, “And who was that attractive man you were seeing off on the train? That couldn’t have been the charming stranger who was at the wedding, could it? Oh—Sherrill! Naughty, naughty! I thought there was a reason for the changes in the wedding plans!”

Sherrill was glad when at last she reached her own room and could shut the door on the world and shut herself in with her own thoughts and memories. But a moment later Gemmie knocked at the door and brought a message from her aunt that she would like to see her for a minute.

Gemmie looked at Sherrill’s lovely red cheeks and smiling lips coldly, distantly. Sherrill felt as if she would like to shake her. But she gave her a brilliant smile and went swiftly to her aunt’s room.

“Well,” said the old lady from among the pillows of her old-fashioned four-poster bed, “I hope you see now that he never stole that necklace!”

“Aunt Pat!” said Sherrill in an indignant, horrified tone. “I never thought he did! I
knew
he didn’t! But I wanted him to come back to prove to
you
that he hadn’t! He was
my
stranger. I knew he wasn’t that kind, but I couldn’t expect other people to realize what he was. I was afraid you would always suspect him if he didn’t come back.”

“Hmm!” said the old lady contemptuously. “I know. You didn’t give me much credit for discernment. Thought you had it all. Now, run along to your bed, child. You’ve had enough for one evening. I just wanted you to know I think he’s all right. Good night!”

Chapter 19

S
herrill awoke the next morning with a song in her heart, but while she was dressing she talked seriously with herself. It was utterly impossible, she told herself, that a splendid man like Graham Copeland could care about a girl he had seen only a few hours, and especially under such circumstances. There was that precious kiss, but it had been given half in fun, to carry out the joke on Mrs. Battersea. Men didn’t think much of just a good-bye kiss—most men, that is. But her heart told her that this man was different. She knew that it had meant much to him.

Then she told herself to be sensible, that it was wonderful enough just to have a real friend when she was feeling so lonely and left out of everything.

Of course he was very far away. He might even forget her soon, but at least he was a friend, a young friend, to tide her over this lost, humiliating spot in her life.

And he had said he would come soon again! Well, she mustn’t count too much on that, but her heart leaped at the thought, and she went about her room singing softly:

“When I have Jesus in my heart,
What can take Him away?
Once take Jesus into my heart,
And He has come to stay.”

The trill of her voice reached across the hall to Aunt Pat’s room, and the old lady smiled to herself and murmured, “The dear child!” and then gave a little wistful sigh.

It was raining hard all day that day, but Sherrill was like a bright ray of sunshine. It was not raining rain to her; it was raining pansies and forget-me-nots in her heart, and she did not at all understand what meant this great lightheartedness that had come to her. She had never felt toward anyone before as she felt toward this stranger. She had utterly forgotten her lost bridegroom. She chided herself again and again and tried to be sober and staid, but still there was that happy little thrill in her heart, and her lips bubbled over into song now and then when she hardly knew it.