The Flower Brides (19 page)

“I’m going to need a lot of help,” she said slowly. “Would—you—sometimes—pray for me?”

She lifted her lovely, worried eyes with a look that went straight to Ethan’s heart.

“I surely will!” he said earnestly. “Shall we begin now?”

Right where he was, he knelt beside the chair, flinging his hat down on the floor, grasping her hand in his, and pulling her gently down beside him. Marigold knelt, her hand enfolded in that warm, strong clasp, the letter lying between them on the chair forgotten. Laurie’s letter! She was not thinking about it. She was listening to the tender prayer. She felt she would never forget the words, they were so indelibly stamped on her heart. She felt as if she were brought in touch with her Savior as she heard this earnest voice pleading Christ’s precious promises, claiming the resurrection power in her life, not only for herself but for her friends. She felt suddenly a strength at her command that she had never dreamed existed.

When they rose, the letter was left lying on the chair, and Marigold looked up with a radiant face. There were no words to express her feelings, but somehow she knew he understood.

Ethan stood for a moment looking gravely down at her. There was something so deep and tender in that look that it almost brought tears to her eyes, but she did her best to turn them into a smile, and the answering smile she got was something she felt she would hide away in her heart to remember.

She wanted to thank him for what he had done for her, but still the words would not come. He might be going out of her life forever, but she felt he had taught her to know the Lord Jesus and put her in touch with the resurrection power. Whatever came, she never would forget him.

Then he reached out and took her hand in a quick clasp once more.

“Good-bye,” he said quietly. “I’ll be praying! And—sometime—perhaps you’ll let me know how things came out.”

Then, before she could answer, he was gone. She heard his footsteps outside on the stairs. Would she ever see him anymore?

She went to the window, and sudden tears blinded her eyes, but she brushed them away and looked out. She could see the lights of his car down there, and now he was opening the car door. But before he swung himself into the seat, he turned and looked up, waved his hand, and she waved hers back in farewell, glad that her room lights were on and that he could see her. This was perhaps the best way of saying what she could not find words to speak.

And then the car glided away from the curb and shot down the street. The little red lights at the rear seemed to be blinking to her as it swung around a corner and onto the main road.

She turned back to the room and felt all at once most desolate. What a happy hour they had had together preparing supper and eating it in the little kitchen. How wonderful he had been, acting just as if he belonged there. It thrilled her to go over the moments of the incident.

And then, with one more wistful look down the street where he had disappeared into the fast-gathering darkness, she turned and went over to the chair where they had knelt to pray and there lay the letter! How mortifying that Mrs. Waterman had brought it just then and called Laurie “
her
young man.” What must Ethan have thought? But how he had taken it all as a matter of course and entered into her vague anxiety about the future, promising to pray, kneeling right down and praying!

She thrilled again as she went over the prayer word by word, learning it like a lesson that she must not ever forget. It was some minutes before she brought her mind back to the present and realized that there was a letter to be read. How that letter would have stirred her just four or five short days ago. Even the very outside of it, sealed, as she held it now. Yet now she opened it with a divided attention, treasuring moments just past and looking into a new kind of life to which she was committed.

M
arigold roused to read the letter at last, with a curious aloof mind that seemed to be far removed from the writer of the letter, as if time had swept in and obliterated the little filaments of happenings that bound her interest to him.

Marigold, as she read, began to grow cold around her throat and to tremble. Somehow there was something strange about that letter, not like Laurie! Or had it been there all the time and she had been blind to it?

She felt like a person whose eyes had just been opened and she was seeing “men as trees walking.” She couldn’t be sure of herself and her own judgment.

But when she had read the letter over again, several things stood out sharply. First of all was the thought that Laurie had not mentioned the party to which she had not come, nor said a word about his long, unexplained silence! All her anxiety and uneasiness and anxious waiting when she first got to Washington, and he hadn’t even noticed it! Far from telephoning her in trepidation and begging her to come to the party as she had expected that he might, offering to drive down after her perhaps, he acted as if he had not even known she was invited. Exactly as if the party wouldn’t be counted within her world.

And next there stood out the fact that Laurie was beginning on nightclubs again, and she was going to have to meet that question right away tonight before she had thought the matter out on her knees. It was then she began to tremble.

And reading the letter over the third time now, like a stab in her heart there came that reference to her mother as being a spy. Laurie had never spoken of her mother’s carefulness as “spying” before, and something in her rose up and resented his attitude. The whole letter didn’t sound like Laurie, the Laurie she had so admired and enjoyed and loved to companion with. It was as if she were seeing a new side of him entirely.

Then it flashed upon her that she had been holding in abeyance her judgment about Laurie that had tried to force itself upon her ever since she had seen him in the company of that other girl, looking down into her eyes with the glance that Marigold had supposed was all her own.

Yet now the whole thing seemed unreal. She seemed to have grown beyond it all since she left home last Friday.

But he was coming tonight and was expecting to take her to a nightclub! What should she do?

With a quick motion, she went to the switch and turned off her lights. Laurie was going to look to her lit windows to signal to him she was at home, and there would be no lights! She was not going to any more nightclubs! That was settled. She had known in her heart while she was talking with Ethan Bevan that they would never interest her again. In fact, they never had of themselves. It was only Laurie’s insistence that drew her a couple of times. She had never felt at home there. It was an alien world, and she had felt ashamed. She saw it plainly now. She had been half ashamed to be there.

She had always evaded her mother’s questions as to what kind of places Laurie took her. That had hurt her conscience, too. But now she was face-to-face with the whole thing, and she knew it must be settled for all time. She had told Ethan Bevan and she had told her Lord that she wanted to die with Him. She had felt already the joy of realizing what that was to mean to her whole life. She could not compromise.

If Laurie came anyway, even though there were no lights, she would tell him plainly that she would go to no more such places with him. But she felt somehow that she did not want to have to talk it over with him tonight. She wanted to get her feet firmly fixed, to get near to her Lord. She wanted to be alone and to think over that wonderful prayer that had put her so far beyond these things of earth and made her see herself as a redeemed sinner commissioned with a message to other lost sinners. Laurie would not understand that now, probably, and she must learn the best and wisest way to say it to him.

So she sat in the dark and faced her problem. Looked at Laurie,
her
Laurie, as she had considered him for long, pleasant, thoughtless months in the past, looked him straight in the face and made herself acknowledge just where he now seemed to be lacking.

Laurie was not of her world. That was plain. Mother had said so, and her own honest self had sometimes been afraid of it. Yet she had told herself that her influence would gradually give him different ideals. Had it? Had her influence done anything to him?

Looking at the question as she sat there in the dark, she had to acknowledge that, far from bringing Laurie to see as she saw,
she
had been yielding little by little to
his
wishes, going here and there and breaking down standards that had been hers since childhood until she had come to the place where she had even once or twice questioned whether those weren’t outworn standards and perhaps she wasn’t doing such a dreadful thing in giving them up, if it pleased Laurie.

But now as she faced herself and her world, with that sense of God’s presence in the room that had been there since Ethan’s prayer, everything looked different to her, and she began to ask herself why she had wanted to please Laurie anyway?

She had had beautiful, happy times with him, oh yes; but was Laurie all she wanted in life?

She tried to bring a vision of his handsome face, his smile, his adoring eyes looking into her own, and in spite of her best efforts she could only see him looking into that other girl’s eyes! Was Laurie wholly false or just fun-loving and irresponsible? And if only irresponsible, would he ever grow out of it into a strong, dependable friend, such a man as Ethan Bevan?

Her thoughts grew more and more troubled, and finally she rose and went into her own room, dark except for the arc light from the street that sent long fingers of brightness across the wall. There she dropped upon her knees and began to talk to her Lord. And when, half an hour later, Laurie pulled up at the corner of the street and slowed his high-powered car to a crawling gait, Marigold had forgotten that he might be passing. She was gazing into the face of her dying Lord and saying softly with closed eyes, “Oh, Jesus Christ, I want to be crucified with Thee, and though nevertheless I have to live here in this earthly body, I want it not to be myself that is living in me any longer, but Christ who lives my life for me; and the life that I now live in the flesh, I want to live henceforth by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

When she got up from her knees and turned on the light she was surprised to find that it was much later than she supposed. If Laurie had come that way at all, he saw no light, and he must have gone on his way, thinking she was not yet at home.

She drew a breath of relief. The she remembered that the dishes were not washed and she had not unpacked her suitcase. She did not want to talk to Laurie tonight. She did not want to argue about nightclubs. She was tired, and she felt as if such an experience would dispel some of the glory and beauty from the talk she had had with Ethan before he left. She wanted to fix that in her memory so that its joy could never be effaced. She did not want it dulled by other experiences yet. Ethan, of course, did not belong to her, and after he felt the need of praying for her was over he would probably never think of her again; but the touching of their lives had not been for nothing. It was a sacred experience.

So she turned on her light, changed into a little cotton house dress, and went about the work of putting the kitchen to rights for the morning when she would have to hurry off to school.

The kitchen seemed to be filled with bits of pleasant memories floating about among the dishes. The bread plate she had passed to Ethan when they had almost dropped it between them; the look in his eyes when he smiled; the clean, clear ring of his laughter when she told a funny little story about her childhood; the delicate sprigged china coffee cup that he had admired and drunk from. She handled them all gently as she washed and wiped them, her face vivid with happy thoughts. She was by no means trying to think how to talk to Laurie about not going to nightclubs. That subject had a reprieve in her mind, while she gleaned every bright little memory from the brief time that Ethan had been there with her. Ethan, who had helped her to find peace and had lit the perplexity of her pathway.

Then, just as she was opening her suitcase to hang up her garments and put everything to rights, the telephone rang.

It startled her. She almost contemplated not answering it, for perhaps it was Laurie. Let him think for this one night that she had not returned. But then she thought better of it and answered the second insistent ring.

It was her mother’s voice, and her heart gave a glad little extra beat, for after all, the apartment was a bit lonely. She hadn’t realized that it would be so without her mother, not for just a few days.

“Oh, Mother
dear
! Yes, I’m all right. Yes, we had a lovely drive, the day was perfect. Yes, Ethan came in for a few minutes and had a bite of supper. We had fun getting it together—beans and scrambled eggs and tongue and peaches, some combination! But Ethan had to hurry, you know; the shop where he was to get those parts he went after closed at six. Yes, he has gone. Started back right away. Yes, I’m quite all right. No, I’m not going out anywhere. Just unpacking and then I’m going to bed. Be good and don’t worry about me. I want you to stay all next week and get really rested up yourself. Besides, you mustn’t leave Aunt Marian until Elinor gets home.”