The Flower Brides (62 page)

Then Stephen Disston came awake and looked up in consternation at his companion.

But Gordon stooped and picked them up.

A piece of tinder, a wire coil, a couple of candles, and a box of matches! And the whole smelled unmistakably of kerosene.

He put them carefully into the bag as if he were not noticing what they were and handed the bag over to the master of the house.

“You’ll want to put those away out of sight, won’t you? At least for the present? No need to have reporters poking around trying to find leads for headlines.”

He tried to say it carelessly, as if it were not a thing that mattered so much. Then his eyes met the unhappy eyes of Disston, and he saw the other fully understood. His face was still very white.

“Thank you,” said Disston. “I’ll take your advice—for the present—at least until I understand what this means.”

A newspaper lay on the kitchen table, and Gordon proffered it.

“Wrap it in that and put it away somewhere till things clear up a little.”

“You’re being very kind,” said Disston, visibly getting his emotions in hand.

“Not at all,” said Gordon. “I wish there was something really worthwhile that I could do for you.”

“You have done a great deal,” said Disston slowly, “and—I shall not forget it.”

Their eyes met, and a smile of friendliness flashed between them. Then Disston silently unlocked the door that led to the scene of ruin, and they stood for a few minutes studying the probably course of the fire.

“This wall ought to be closed up at once,” said Gordon. “When the police leave it will be practically impossible to keep out the swarm of small boys and curious people.”

“Yes,” sighed Mr. Disston, looking around with a hopeless sadness in his eyes. “I suppose I ought to send for a carpenter at once.”

“I was going to suggest,” said Gordon thoughtfully, “that there are some boards out there in the tool house. If you are willing, I could bring them in and nail them up over the largest break in the wall. That would do temporarily until you have time to get your mind on what should be done.”

“Oh, I couldn’t think of troubling you anymore,” protested Disston.

“Nonsense,” said Gordon eagerly. “We’re neighbors, you know, and besides, my mother and I have taken a deep interest in our landlord’s house.” He smiled a deep, warm smile that comforted the heart of the sorrowful landlord. “You’d do the same for me, I’ll warrant, if I were in trouble.”

“I’m not sure I would know how,” said the elder man humbly. “But where is this lumber you speak of? I ought to know, of course, but I’ve never had much time to look after the details about the house. If I could just get this place closed to curious eyes for the time being, it certainly would be a great help.”

They went together to the tool house and brought back planks, Gordon handling them capably and taking the heavier part of the labor.

“Now,” he said, when they had enough of the planks to cover the large gap in the wall that the fire had made, “I wonder if you happen to be able to locate a hammer and some nails? I think I saw a ladder in the cellar stairway. It won’t take long to make this secure.”

He went capably to work, and in a very short time the room that had been gutted by fire was closed to the eyes of the countryside, who continued to straggle about all day to look and wonder and say who they thought had done it or how it had caught on fire.

“Now,” said Gordon, coming down from the ladder after driving the last nail, “you’ll come down to the cottage and have a bite of lunch with me, won’t you? You look white and tired. I’m sure you need it. Yes, come, I’m sure Mother will have something ready.”

So, comforted by the friendly smile and the insistent hand upon his arm, Stephen Disston walked down to the stone cottage with his tenant and they had lunch together. Such a comfortable, quite lunch in that sweet little home wherein there seemed to be no perplexities nor hates nor problems. Such a home as he used to have before Marilla went away. Yes, and even afterward when he and Diana comforted one another together. Would life ever unsnarl itself and things go right again? Who had started that fire? And was that bag Helen’s? Could that be the one he had seen lying across the end of the couch the night before last in the hotel? Or wait—wasn’t it really Diana’s, the one that someone sent her from abroad? How had Helen gotten it? And where, oh,
where
was Diana?

“Your daughter is not at home just now?” Mrs. MacCarroll was asking him pleasantly. “I thought she was such a sweet girl. I miss her going by.”

Diana’s father looked up with a heavy sigh.

“No, she is not at home!” he said with infinite sadness in his eyes and voice.

Where, oh,
where
was Diana? If he could only find Diana!

D
iana had been working hard in her restaurant, day after day. Sometimes it seemed to her that she had been there a year serving uncouth people. Sometimes it seemed to her as if almost all of them were animals, just animals feeding, with no resemblance to humanity at all, at least not to the lovely refined humanity that she knew. She shuddered as she crept wearily into her bed at night at the thought of another day that would rush upon her oh-so speedily in the midst of her heavy sleep and drag her back to her duties again.

And her pay was so pitifully small, her tips so trifling and scarce. People of the sort she served had not much to spare for tips, greedy, hard-eyed people, all but those few who appraised her eyes, her hair, her smile, her figure, and gave only when they could win her notice. From those she shrank most of all. Some were half drunk when they came in. How she loathed them! It was only through trying to remember that God must care for them, too, that Christ died for them, that she could make herself wait upon them.

How the days loomed ahead of her, each one worse than the last! How she dreaded each one as she went forth and came home so deadly tired that she could take no comfort in the quietness and peace of even that little third-story back.

The only oasis in the dreariness of her life was the box of carnations. Twice they had come on Saturday nights. Would they come again? The hope of them made one little sweet thing to look forward to. Somehow her heart rested down on those mystery flowers as if they were part of her religion, and as if they came fresh each week from God to let her know He cared. Her faith grew little by little as she breathed in their spicy breath. They were such frail, lovely things, and yet so sturdy and healthy and long-lived. For each installment had lived and glowed and been beautiful until the next arrived. And it comforted her sometimes on her hardest days to think of them back there in her little high, lonely room glowing and waiting for her, a rosy breath of love and sympathy, from someone, whom she would probably never know except vaguely as God’s messenger.

It had been a hard day, harder than usual, because it was a holiday and Saturday again. There had been a tougher lot of people in the restaurant than usual. The place had been crowded from early morning on, and Diana had been greatly rushed. Moreover, some of the other girls, who had never really recovered from their resentment at her finer ways, had made it more than usually uncomfortable for her, maliciously upsetting her tray when it was all ready to take to a customer in a hurry, spilling a glass of water over the food she had prepared to take to another, tripping her as she passed with a heavy tray lifted high above her head and almost bringing her down among broken dishes. It was not their fault that she had been able to avert the catastrophe by an almost superhuman effort and recover her balance with only a broken plate and the loss of an order—which, of course, she would have to pay for. She discovered as the day went on that she had also wrenched her back, and her head was throbbing wildly. By three o’clock in the afternoon she suddenly began to feel that she actually could not go on any longer. Her feet were aching in sympathy with her back and head, and a great despair was surging over her soul. She was being beaten, beaten by this job. She could not go on any longer. Yet she knew she must or give up utterly. Because if she lost this job, where would she turn for another? Beaten! What could she do? Would she go home? Never! The thought of Helen still loomed as a positive barrier. There was no relief there. And if she gave up her job and was sick in the bargain, where would she go? Who would take care of her? Suppose she had a fever? She was burning up now. It probably was a fever. Would they take her to a charity hospital? Well, there might be even worse fates than that. Perhaps she would die, and then she would be out of it all. If God cared for her, then she would go to be with Him!

In the wildness and flurry of the sordid atmosphere, the thought of going to God seemed only a thought of quietness and peace. Nothing else seemed to matter if He cared enough just to set her free from all these worries of the world into which she had wandered, where there were no open doors to go back to home and safety and peace.

It was in this state of mind, and while she lingered an instant standing by a shelf in the kitchen, trying to swallow a cup of weak coffee that was not even hot, that she heard her name shouted by the manager.

“Jane! Here! Customer calling for you, Jane! Make it snappy!”

Her hand trembled as she set down the distasteful cup hastily, caught up her tray, and hurried away, praying as she had of late fallen into the habit of doing,
Oh, God, help me to get through this once more
.

She was almost up to the table the manager had indicated before she realized who the customer was that had called for her. It was a man who had been there three times before that week. He was a large sensuous brute, with thick lips and a cruel face. She remembered his fulsome flattery the first time he had come in; his little pig-eyes upon her had seemed to soil her very soul. She had avoided waiting upon him several times since that first experience. But now it was too late for that, and she had been ordered by the manager to wait upon him.

She gathered all her dignity and went forward, a shudder of horror passing over her slender shoulders in spite of her best efforts, and when she reached him she found that he was drunk!

Frightened, she paused, keeping the table between them, but he reached out a burly arm and grasped her wrist, trying to draw her nearer.

“Come over here, sweetie,” he demanded in a loud tone that everybody in the room could hear! “I need sympathy! That’s why I sent for you, Jane! Come clost an’ tell me whatcha got ta eat—!”

But Diana, more frightened than she had ever been in her life, struggled with all her might to get her wrist free from that terrible grasp, and suddenly she felt a stout arm around her waist and a familiar voice towering over her.

“Hey you, Mortie Matzan, you lay off my gal! She’s
my
sweetie, an’ I don’t want nobody else buttin’ in. Scram there! Hear what I say? This dame is mine. Ain’t you, sweetheart!”

The voice was not loud on account of the roomful of customers, but the manager’s hideous face loomed over her in a possessive leer that almost took her senses away.

Diana gave one terrified sound like a wounded animal, and tearing herself loose from the hateful arm, she suddenly raised a glass of water from the table before her and flung it full in the proprietor’s face. The glass, falling heavily down on the drunken man’s foot, brought a howl from him to add to the confusion. But Diana was not there to see. She was madly dashing down the room toward the kitchen, colliding with another waitress in the doorway, leaving a shower of tray and dishes in her wake, flying through the kitchen and out the open door into the alley at the back, barely escaping a fall over the big garbage can that stood in her way. She rounded the corner into the alley, went blindly up one street and down another, through any alley that presented itself in her way, only so that it lay in the general direction of her own little third-story room.

It was only about two o’clock, and there were people all around her everywhere, but she dared not look behind her. It seemed to her that the whole restaurant—proprietor, employees, customers, drunk and sober—must be following. She did not remember that she had left her hat and jacket. Even her purse was of no concern to her now. They were in her locker and she wore the key around her neck, but she would never go back for them, not if she starved to death. There was only fifty cents in the purse, anyway, and what was fifty cents now?

She was panting and frightened, more frightened than she had ever been in her life before, and the tears were rolling down her cheeks, though she did not know it. She turned at last into her own street and fled up the block like a shadow.

She did not see the shabby form that lurked across the street in the narrow arched court between two houses, all unsuspected, watching for her arrival. Having nothing to do for the time being, and having a hunch it might be useful, he had stationed himself there to discover if possible her comings and goings; and now she came so startlingly, flying through the street hatless and fairly flinging herself at the door with the key in her trembling hand, that he had to look carefully to be sure it was really she. He had never seen her before without a hat on, not since she had been a little girl in school, but there was something about her lithe way of running, even in her fright, that made him sure of her. And so he stood there watching until she had disappeared from sight and the grim door had slammed behind her. Then he slowly disengaged himself from the shadows of the archway and slithered down the street and around the corner, skulking close to the houses, skirting the block until he disappeared into the alley behind the house that she had entered. There he took up his stand to watch for a possible vision of a girl in the third-story back window.

But Diana was lying facedown across her bed weeping her heart out, and he presently slipped away to refresh himself with a glass of something heartening. It was not the first time he had watched in the alley under that window.