The Flower Brides (71 page)

“Well, we’ll get you home as quickly as possible,” he said, and he began to question her as to where her street was located.

He purposely avoided the scene of the accident and took a shortcut, for fortunately, he know the city well. He tried to talk cheerfully as he furtively watched her droop in her corner. It was all too evident that she had been keeping up on her nerve, and now that her errand was almost completed she was beginning to feel the reaction.

It was with great relief that he presently drew up at the house she indicated and helped her out, following her with the case and bottle. She took the little package of medicine and fairly flew up the steps and into the house.

I
t was a small, high, old-fashioned brick house with white marble steps of a long-ago vintage, in an unfashionable quarter of the city, invaded now by business on every hand. The other houses on either side and across from it bore signs in the windows: V
ACANCIES
, A
PARTMENTS TO
L
ET
, B
OARDING.
It was a sordid, dreary street. But Wainwright did not wait to examine the surroundings. He hurried into the house, finding a strange anxiety at his own heart for the sick mother whom he had never seen.

The hall was of the dark, narrow type with steep stairs mounting straight up to a darker hall above. It seemed gloomy beyond description. But at the right, one half of a double door stood open, and there the gloom ceased, for the room into which it opened was surprisingly cozy and homelike. Soft lamplight, rosily shaded, played over some handsome pieces of old furniture and a good picture or two on the walls. A soft-toned rug covered the floor. There was even a speck of a fireplace with a log smoldering flickeringly and an easy chair placed beside it. And there were low bookshelves running across the room on either side of the fireplace and bits of good bric-a-brac here and there on the top shelf. It looked a pleasant place to live.

Between the front windows was a long old-fashioned mirror in a quaint gilt frame, and in that he saw reflected the room beyond, which in the parlance of other days would have been called a back parlor.

The double doors between the rooms were open, and he caught a glimpse of a wide old-fashioned bed, too large for the room, and a delicate face on the pillow, framed in silver-white hair. It was a face strangely sweet and filled with a great peace. He held his breath. Was she dead already? He could see Camilla touching her lips to the white brow with a caress as soft as a breath and then dropping quietly to her knees beside the bed. The doctor stood there with his back to the door, his hand on the frail wrist of the sick woman.

Wainwright hesitated in the hall, wondering whether it would be intrusion to step inside the front room and put down the doctor’s case and bottle.

Then the doctor turned and saw him, his quick eye noting what he carried, and he stepped quietly out into the hall.

“What more can I do here?” asked Wainwright in a low tone, handing over the doctor’s case. “I’m at your service as long as I can help.”

The doctor gave him a keen glance.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be glad to accept that offer. We need a nurse at once. Could you go and bring her? I don’t want Camilla to leave her mother again. I can’t tell how things are coming out yet. Besides, that woman who rooms upstairs is so incapable, she can’t even boil water.”

“I’ll go,” said Wainwright quickly. “Have you one in mind, or do I hunt one up?”

“Miss York,” said the doctor briefly. “I phoned. She’s free. She’ll be ready when you get there. Here’s the address.”

“All right,” said Wainwright, taking the slip of paper the doctor handed him. “But before I go I must tell you, for I’m afraid Miss Chrystie won’t think of it— You’d better look her over a little. She’s been in a bad accident. Her car was all smashed up. She’s very brave. She insists she’s all right, but she’s just keeping up on her nerve.”

The doctor gave him a quick look.

“You don’t say!” he exclaimed. “I somehow felt I ought not to let her go alone.”

“She didn’t get far alone,” said the young man. “I happened along and saw it all. We picked her up for dead, but she snapped out of it wonderfully and was only anxious to get on with her errand. I’m afraid, though, that she’s about all in, with the shock and anxiety together.”

He gave the details briefly and then went out after the nurse.

It was not a long trip, and the nurse was waiting when he reached her lodgings, so they were soon back at the house again.

Camilla was lying on the couch in the front room when they entered the house; her eyes were closed and her face was wan and white. But her eyes flew open as they came in, and she sat up at once.

Wainwright went toward her and gently pushed her back to the pillow again.

“Please!” he said in a whisper. “You’ll need your strength, you know. You must save yourself. Here’s Miss York. She’ll attend to everything. And I’m here to help her as long as I’m needed. I’m a friend tonight, you know.” And his face lit up with a sweet, gentle smile. Camilla felt again that sense of being protected and cared for in a peculiar way.

“But I must get a room ready for her,” said Camilla anxiously as she yielded to his persuasive hand and lay still on her pillow.

“I can do that,” asserted Wainwright firmly, as though he were quite accustomed to getting rooms ready for people. “What you need is a little rest or there’ll be two patients here instead of one. That wouldn’t be so good, you know.”

He smiled again with a flash of his perfect teeth, and she succumbed.

“But you don’t know where things are,” said Camilla weakly, with a worried pucker on her white brow.

“I can learn, can’t I? Where were you planning to put her?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Camilla in a troubled voice. “She’ll have to have the dining room, I suppose. We’ll eat in the kitchen. I wasn’t planning. I didn’t know she was coming. Oh, why did you bring her here? She will be so crowded here! We really haven’t a need for a nurse now I am back.”

“It was the doctor’s orders. I only went after her,” said Wainwright serenely. “He had already phoned for her before we got back. He thought you ought not to be alone when he has to leave. He said there ought to be someone here who knows what to do in an emergency.”

“Oh!” said Camilla with a little sharp breath like a moan, paling at the word
emergency
.

“Of course, there may not be any emergency. We hope there won’t be,” went on Wainwright with a calm, steady voice and another quieting smile, “but it is always best to provide against one, you know. Now, could you just tell me what needs doing and where to find things? You must promise to lie still and wait till I come for instructions and not get up and run around, or I’ll have to lock you in here till we have things in order.”

There was a twinkle in his eye as he said it, but somehow his firm chin looked as if he really might do it if he were disobeyed. Camilla resigned herself, for the moment at least.

“Well, there’s a cot in the third-story back storeroom. There’s an eiderdown quilt there and two blankets. A pillow, too.”

She glanced at his immaculate evening attire and gave a little moan.

“Oh, you oughtn’t to be doing things like that! Not with that beautiful coat on!” She put her hands together with a little helpless motion. “Oh, please! It distresses me!”

“My coat will come off,” said Wainwright, with a grin, and quickly whipped off, first his handsome overcoat, then his formal evening coat.

She had to smile, he was so like a nice big boy, oblivious to the whiteness of his shirt front.

“Now,” he said, “that’s better! Keep that expression on till I get back. I’m all set for the storeroom on the third floor!”

The words were very low. They did not penetrate to the sickroom, although the door was open. Turning swiftly, he went up the stairs with an incredibly soft tread. Even the creaky stairs were unbelievably silent under his careful strides. It was not long before he was moving down again, bearing a light cot under one arm and an eiderdown quilt in the other.

She was standing in the hall when he returned, holding clean sheets, blankets, and a pillow in a case, which she had taken from the shelves in the hall closet. She motioned him to follow her to the dining room and walked lightly as a feather.

He followed her quietly, but when he had put down the cot and taken the bedclothing from her, laying it on the table, he stopped and picked her up in his arms, as if she had been a blanket, and bore her back to the couch in the front room.

“You are a naughty child!” he whispered. “You must be good, or I shall be forced to stay here and hold you down.”

She looked up and saw a pleasant grin upon his face, but there was something in his eyes and the firm mouth that made her lie back again and relax.

“I’m really quite all right,” she protested.

He stopped and whispered softly in her ear.

“If you will not do it for yourself, won’t you do it for her sake?” He motioned with his head toward the sickroom.

This had an instant effect in the look of fear that came into her eyes. Then after an instant’s quiet she said, “If you’ll just let me get up and make that bed, then I can rest.”

“I can make beds!” he declared earnestly. “I went to military school and learned how!” He grinned, and she succumbed.

He slipped off his shoes and disappeared into the dining room. She heard soft little swishing sounds of a hand on the smooth sheets, but for the most part it was very still. Only the creak of a board in the floor now and then. She raised her head and tried to look through her mother’s room into the dining room to the left. She could see the foot of the cot and a hand tucking the blanket in with military precision, a nice, white, well-groomed hand that did not look as if it had made up a bed in many a day. Then she heard soft footsteps and lay down quickly lest he would return and find her disobeying orders.

The doctor was speaking to the nurse in low professional growls. The nurse on her rubber-shod feet went swiftly to the kitchen. Camilla could hear running water. Wainwright had gone out into the kitchen. She could hear him talking softly to the nurse. Then the doctor went out and the nurse came back. Camilla lay there staring up at the ceiling, glancing now and then into the dimness of her mother’s room, longing to be in there watching the doctor’s face to know just what he was thinking at every passing minute about the possibilities of fear or hope.

Wainwright came back presently. His hair was tossed up over his forehead and again she thought how much he looked like a nice boy.

He stopped and murmured to her like a friend of years. “I’m going out to the drugstore for something the doctor wants. I won’t be gone long. I’ll phone about your car and see that it’s cared for. The doctor wants you to lie still unless he calls you. He says you must rest so you can help the nurse when he has to go. I’ll be back very soon and do anything that’s needed.”

She tried to protest, but he stepped into his shoes, swung on his beautiful overcoat over his vest, and was gone before she could do so. She lay there, still staring at the empty doorway where he had stood for an instant before he closed the front door so carefully after him. Then she turned her gaze back to the room, to the handsome evening coat that lay slumped across a chair as if it were perfectly at home. She thought of the strange happenings of the evening, like a dream, with a great fear standing grimly in the background and Wainwright like a strong angel dominating everything. She thought how strange it was for his coat to be lying there across their shabby little armchair; he a stranger from another world than theirs! How kind he was! How like a tried friend! And he was an absolute stranger. She didn’t know a thing about him except his name, a name she had never heard before! What would her mother say to it all? Would she live to know about it?

Then fear came back and held her heart again until it quivered, and she prayed an agonized, wordless prayer.

She must have closed her eyes while she prayed, for when she opened them again it was with a sense of a strong breath of air from outdoors having blown in her face. The light was turned out in the front room where she lay, and it seemed a long time afterward. But when she looked in a fright toward her mother’s room she could see the nurse coming with a glass in her hand, and then she sensed Wainwright standing near her looking down at her. Their eyes met in the dimness of the room, and he smiled. He had a kind look in his eyes, and he stooped over her and put two fingers gently on her wrist for a moment.

“Oh yes.” She stirred softly and tried to rise. “I am quite rested now! I must go to Mother! And you should go home and get some sleep. You have been so good!”

He shook his head and stooped to speak in her ear. “Your mother is resting comfortably now. The doctor thinks there has been a shade of improvement. I’m staying awhile out there in the hall. If you want me, just give a soft little cough and I’ll come. And don’t worry about your car. They’re taking care of it. It’s gone to a garage.”

He drifted away like one of the shadows in the room. She stared around her and wondered if he, too, had been a dream. Then she noticed the big chair was gone and his evening coat was slung across the top of the piano as if it had been a day laborer’s coat. Still marveling, between wakefulness and sleeping, she fell asleep. She did not even hear the milk wagons when they began their rounds nor the bread wagons a little later when they went
clop, clop, clopping
down the icy street. It was broad daylight when she woke with a start and heard the water running in the kitchen sink. She threw aside the coverings and got up quickly, thoroughly awake now and alive to duty and anxiety.

She hurried out into the hall softly with a fearsome glance toward her mother’s room where the shades were drawn, keeping out the brightness of the morning. She could not see into the dim darkness of the room; her eyes were not yet accustomed to the light of day.

She wondered as she crossed the room how her shoes came to be off and where they were, and then she came into the dimness of the hall and saw Wainwright slumped down in the old Morris chair, his overcoat around him and his hair tossed back in disorder. He was asleep, and his face looked white and tired and boyish. He had stayed all night! How wonderful! But what an obligation to have to a stranger!