The Flower Brides (35 page)

Swiftly she went to work, laying a sheet of cardboard from among her drawing materials over the painted surface, soft cotton above that, and then wrapping the whole thing in a big old quilt and tying it securely. And where should she hide it that it could not be found? She pondered the question anxiously as she went back to the big pleasant room across the hall that had been her father and mother’s all her young life. How empty it looked now with Mother’s picture gone. The blank space on the wall seemed to reproach her as she entered and looked around, bringing bitter tears to her eyes again.

But there was need that she act quickly. There was much to be done, and now her work began to assume proportions that she had not realized at first.

She hid the picture back in the dark end of her closet with garment bags hanging in front of it. That would do for the present, though she was by no means satisfied with its safety. Then she went to work in good earnest, gathering out the precious things from her father’s room until she was satisfied there was not a thing left to remind of her mother. She was standing in the doorway surveying the finished work. There was not even an embroidered bureau scarf nor a delicate satin pincushion to speak of the former occupant. Then suddenly she was aware of Maggie standing grimly behind her in the hall holding a broom and a dustcloth in her hands.

“I’ll just finish redding up now,” she said with an air of authority. “You get you to your room and rest yourself awhile.”

Maggie’s sandy eyelashes were wet with recently shed tears, and her lips were set thinly, defiantly, but she would do her duty to the end.

Diana turned with a start.

“Oh, thank you, Maggie,” she said wearily, “that will help a lot. But I can’t lie down now, I’ve a lot to do. I’ve other things to—” she hesitated ashamedly and added, “put away.”

“Yes,” assented Maggie, “you can’t be too careful. Mind your mother’s pearls! And her brooch! The diamond brooch.”

Diana gave her a startled look.

“Oh!” she gasped sorrowfully. “Yes, of course. I hadn’t thought.”

“She’ll be after the pearls,” the old servant commented sagaciously. “I mind her coaxin’ your mommy once ta let her wear ’em.”

“She never did let her have them?” Diana asked the question half fearfully, as if she would discover a precedent that might give her courage.

“Not she!” said Maggie. “She knew her well, that Helen. The pearls would never have come back if she’d once got her hand on them.”

Diana hurried away and hunted up a little chamois jewel bag in which she deposited the precious jewels, strung it on a slender chain around her neck, and dropped it inside her dress. Then with a light of battle in her eyes, she went through the house to cull out and gather into safety all precious things for which she feared.

There were a few fine paintings that had been her mother’s delight, small ones done by good artists. There were some bits of statuary, a few pieces of carved ivory and crystal. They were curios associated especially with her mother. Her father would not think of them nor notice their absence if they were gone, but they might incite the new mistress of the house to destroy them if she at all suspected that they were precious to either Diana or her mother.

When Diana was through with her work the house bore a bare, severe air as if all feminine trifles were done away with forever. She stared around in dismay. How was she going to live with so much gone that had made a great part of the background of her childhood’s home? And yet, they were only trifles she was carrying away, just a small basket full of pretty trifles.

Then she went to the dining room and linen closet and gathered out all the articles that were monogrammed with her mother’s initials. A great deal of the silver, too, that was marked with her mother’s maiden name. Mother had always said they were to be hers. So she carried them, a basket at a time, up to the attic and packed them carefully away in an old haircloth trunk, with a pile of old magazines on the top, and shoved it back under the eaves with plenty of things in front of it. At least for a few days Helen would not go searching, and it was safe there until she could talk with her father and find out his wish in the matter. Still, as she thought over each article she had packed, nearly everything really belonged to herself if she cared to claim it. She had a right to put the things where they would not be seen, a right even to take them out of the house if it became necessary.

The idea crossed her mind that she might even take a small room in a storage house and have some of her own things taken there if she found Helen was likely to make trouble. And yet, could she do that after the new mistress had once arrived?

Puzzled, troubled, weary, and perplexed, she worked, stopping for a sketchy lunch at Maggie’s most earnest insistence and then back to work again.

When she went to her room after a brief meal, which Maggie described as dinner, she looked around at her own little haven with a sense of coming to a refuge. This room, at least, was her own. Here she had her things around her and here she could live her life perhaps, if she could once induce Helen to let her alone. She would try it, at least. She couldn’t go away and leave her dear father. For his sake she must stay. She must endure it somehow.

She looked around miserably on her own precious things. She would have to keep her door locked, she supposed. She couldn’t call a thing her own unless she did, not if Helen took a fancy to it!

The leaden horror of what had befallen her settled down upon her young soul unbearably. The tears fell once more. She was standing by her table where the little crystal vase containing the flowers stood. Their delicate color seemed to stand out in the shadows of the room and lean toward her as if to comfort her, and with sudden impulse she bent over them and laid her tear-wet face against them, her lips on their petals, her burning eyes half closed and brushing across them, their fragrance drenched with her tears. And suddenly, startlingly, they seemed to be human, their petals almost like cool living flesh, their touch like to the touch of a mother, and she buried her face once more in their sweetness and let their tenderness flow over her tired soul. Oh, if she only knew where those flowers came from. If only some unknown, pleasant friend had left them there, some friend to whom she might go and weep and tell her trouble. Their cool impersonal touch soothed her disturbed being and rested her. If there were only a friend somewhere like those flowers, who would understand and help and comfort! Perhaps God was like that! But God seemed so far away! And she didn’t know God!

I
t was early when Diana went to her bed and burrowed her face in the pillow to weep. It could not have been more than half past eight. She did not hear the doorbell ringing nor Maggie’s steps along the hall as she went to open the door. Her ears were covered by the pillow.

But Maggie’s hand upon her shoulder made her start up, feeling as if all her worst fears had come upon her without warning.

“It’s Mr. Bobby Watkins come to call!” announced Maggie with deep satisfaction in her voice. “You’re ta get up and put on your prettiest frock and go down. It’ll cheer you up a bit.”

“Oh, Maggie, I
can
’
t
!” wailed Diana. “You tell him I’ve gone to bed. Tell him anything. Tell him I’m not feeling well if you want to. That’s true.”

Diana, even in the dim room lit only from the hall, was a woebegone enough young creature to touch the heart of her severest critic, and Maggie was anything but that. Her eyes were swollen, her nose was red, and her cheeks were dripping tears. But Maggie stood her ground relentlessly. “Now, Miss Diana, that’s no way to go about it. You’re not ta be unkind ta the nice little man. He’s come ta call, an’ if you don’t see him he’ll be hurt! An if you’ve got a hard thing ta bear in the eyes of the world, you’d best take it facin’ it an’ not lyin’ down. It’s doin’ you no good ta lie there an’ grieve. You’ll only be sick the morn’s morn an’ give that hussy a chance ta gloat over you. There’s no point in lookin’ like a ghost. Get up quick an’ put on your pretty frock an’ come down the stair an’ meet life. Bobby’s a good wee man an’ he’ll make you laugh, an’ that’s half o’ bearin’ things, at least in the eyes of the world.”

“But, Maggie, I’m a sight!” said Diana despairingly.

“A good dash o’ cold water’ll mend that!” encouraged Maggie. “Where’s that new frock with the big white collar? I’ll get it for you while you wash up an’ give your hair a bit lick.”

So Maggie encouraged and urged and prodded, and finally Diana dressed and went down to her caller.

Bobby Watkins was a round-faced little man, not much taller than Diana herself. He was good-natured and kindhearted and rich, but Diana had never been especially interested in him. Now as she went down the last steps it suddenly occurred to her that here was a possible way out of her difficulty. She might marry Bobby. Bobby hadn’t actually asked her to marry him, but her intuition told her that he had come very near to asking her on more than one occasion. It had been her own fault that he had not actually done so. Well, now, suppose she let him ask her, and suppose she should accept?

The thought repelled her yet forced itself upon her wrought-up consciousness, and as she entered the big living room and Bobby rose to greet her with his round, red face shining and his thick lips rolled back in a wide grin of welcome, she saw him in a new role, that of a possible husband. Could she stand it? Could she ever get used to having that bland, self-satisfied, childlike smile around her continually? Was it conceivable that she could ever grow fond of him?

She gave a little shiver of dislike as she entered the room, trying to smile in her usual way and be pleasant, conscious of her recent tears, aware suddenly of the strangeness and bareness of the room from which little homelike touches seemed to have utterly fled as the result of her activities that afternoon. She gave him her hand in greeting and winced at the grip he gave her. His hand seemed so big and powerful, so possessive!

She lifted her face, and it was good she did not know how lovely she was with that hint of tears around her lashes, the troubled light in her eyes, the flush on her cheeks left over from her weeping.

He had brought her flowers, and she was glad to withdraw her hand from his greeting and open them. Gardenias in their stiff loveliness, a lot of them. He was extravagant in his buying. She could have anything she wanted if she belonged to him! The thought stabbed her with the memory of Maggie’s words that morning. But again her soul recoiled from the thought. She was in trouble and sorely needed someone to comfort her, but she could not conceive of finding comfort in Bobby’s broad, plump shoulder. She couldn’t even think of being willing to tell him what had happened to upset her world.

She heard the jokes he was telling as if she were far above him somewhere up by the ceiling, looking down on him and not really listening to what he was saying. His loud, boisterous laughter grated on her sensibilities and made her wish to turn and fly upstairs again and get away from the thought of him. Oh, why had Maggie put that suggestion in her mind? Bobby had been just a pleasant, rather tiresome friend before, one who didn’t matter much either way. Now he seemed to have come to torment her in her misery. Why hadn’t she just insisted that Maggie should go down and make some excuse for her?

But she smiled graciously and thanked Bobby for the flowers. Her lips seemed stiff with suffering and her whole face too weary to smile, but she managed it. And perhaps Bobby noticed the misty sweet look of aloofness as she sat down. Certainly he was impressed by something in her manner, for he said with a boisterous laugh, “You’re certainly looking your best tonight, Di! It must be what you’re wearing. That white around your shoulders is very attractive. Makes sort of an aura around you, or isn’t that the right word? Perhaps
halo
is the word I mean, only that is over your head, isn’t it?” And Bobby laughed as if the joke were very great indeed.

Diana sat in the chair opposite him, stiffly, with the box of gardenias in her lap, and looked at him. She tried to imagine herself confiding in him that her father was about to marry a perfectly impossible woman. She tried to imagine his blunt, embarrassed reaction to her confidence if she should attempt it and felt almost hysterical over the probable result. It was with difficulty that she controlled the sudden desire to laugh, with laughter that was near to tears.

Then she heard the telephone ringing, and she sobered suddenly, her face turning perfectly white and fear coming into her eyes. Oh, could that be her father? Had he telephoned at last? Perhaps there was relief in sight!
Oh, God! If only that could be!

She half rose from her chair with a gesture almost as if she would fling the gardenias from her, box and all. Then she heard Maggie’s faithful hurried steps in the hall, and she knew she would answer and call her. And she dropped back again with the box still in her lap, realizing that she must not appear to be anxious. So she sat with a frozen smile locked upon her pale lips, waiting in a perfect fever for Maggie to come and set her free to go and talk with her father, wildly hoping all sorts of lovely things—that her father had seen what an impossible thing he was about to try to do and had called her up to soothe her fears and tell her he had reconsidered, tell her he loved her, tell her he hadn’t realized.

But the seconds went by and grew into minutes, and she heard Maggie go back to the kitchen without calling her. Oh, could it be possible that Maggie had told her father she was busy with a caller, could Maggie have dared to presume to do that? Or had she taken a message and was waiting until the caller was gone to deliver it? Oh, had she missed talking with her father? The thought was agony. She must find out. And finally she lifted miserable eyes to her guest’s and interrupted a long, eager description of an accident he had suffered driving with a friend in his new car. “Bobby, excuse me just a minute. I heard the telephone ring, and I’ve been expecting a call from Father all day. I must see if that was he.”