CRIMSON MOUNTAIN (14 page)

D
o you know,” said Pilgrim as he helped her into the car, “Mark has fixed up my old jalopy so well that I think I’m taking it back to camp with me, in the hope that I can either get some use out of it down there or else find a better sale for it in case I have to leave the country soon.”

“Oh,” said Laurel with a little catch in her breath that sounded like dismay. And then just in time, she added coolly, “But of course, if you have to leave the country, you would want to sell it. Still, if you don’t leave, it will be nice for you to keep it to come back now and then if you have the chance.”

“Yes,” said Pilgrim, “I would need it in that case,” and he sighed a little wearily as if he had but small hope of any such possibility.

Then they pulled up in front of a little white bungalow with sturdy evergreens nestled around its porch and a bright light shining from pleasant windows with frail, diaphanous curtains of white.

“Oh, what a sweet little home,” said Laurel eagerly. “Did she live here when you were a boy?”

“Yes, she’s always been right here. I think somebody told me she came here as a bride. It certainly is a swell little house, and the little lady looks just as if she belonged here. As if the house was built around her to suit her every need.”

“What a description!” laughed Laurel. “See, you have prejudiced me in her favor even before I have seen her.”

“Well, I know you’ll like her, and I’m sure she will like you. I sort of wanted you to have someone that I knew to whom you could go now and then,” and he gave her a shy smile. “Of course it’s none of my business, you know, and I don’t want to presume.”

“But you’re not presuming. It will be wonderful to know a friend of yours.”

“Oh, but now maybe I have given you a wrong impression,” he said anxiously. “You know she wouldn’t count herself a personal
friend
of mine. One doesn’t make personal friends of the boy who delivers eggs and berries, but she was nice to me many times, went out of her way to be nice, and I’m sure she would take my word for it what you are. You see, with you it would be different. She probably knows your family—”

“Oh, now, please don’t begin that kind of talk,” said Laurel determinedly, “we’re just friends and no different at all. If your lady is what you say she is, she won’t have any ideas like that. She wouldn’t
want
you to have an inferiority complex, you know. If she did, she wouldn’t be fine as you say she is. She would laugh at such an idea. We have to stand on our own merits, not on how much money our parents had when they died. If she is going to make a distinction between us on that kind of a basis, I don’t want to go in.”

“All right, you win,” said Pilgrim with a grin. “Come on, let’s go in, and you can judge for yourself what she is.”

So they walked together up the white steps, passing between the evergreens to where a bright brass knocker shone on a very white door. Pilgrim boldly put out his hand and knocked, conscious all the time that the last time he went to that little house he had gone to the back door and not to the front.

A sweet little woman came to the door, soft wavy brown hair with threads of silver tucked back smoothly, coiled low on her neck. Steady, kind blue eyes; a gentle, firm, pleasant mouth; trim little figure almost like a girl’s; fine, intelligent hands with steady purpose in their motions.

Pilgrim stepped forward, almost shyly, the old days suddenly upon his memory. “Mrs. Gray, I’m Phil Pilgrim. Have you forgotten me?”

The intense blue eyes went to his face and studied it a moment. “Phil Pilgrim!” she said, and a light came into her face. “Phil Pilgrim! So it is! You went away to college! I heard about it! And now you’re a soldier boy! I’m proud of you!”

Her hands went out in welcome, as if he had been someone closely related to her. She took his hands in a warm quick clasp, and then her eyes went to Laurel, as she stood in the shadow looking on with deep interest.

“And this is—your—?” she looked at Pilgrim for explanation.

“This is a friend, Miss Sheridan. Maybe you know her, too, Mrs. Gray. She used to live here. At least you must have known
of
her.”

The intense eyes turned with quick scrutiny and lit up with a new welcome. “Sheridan!” she said. “Sheridan? Not Langdon Sheridan’s daughter?”

“Yes,” said Pilgrim eagerly, “she is. I thought you would know the Sheridans.”

The blue eyes lit up again. “I certainly did,” said Mrs. Gray, putting out her hands and taking both of Laurel’s in a warm folding. “Your mother was a wonderful woman, my dear. I admired her so much. She went to the same Bible study class I did, and we often looked over the same hymnbook together. She was president of our Ladies’ Aid and did so many lovely things for other people. She was a dear woman. Of course she didn’t know me very well, though she was always so cordial when we met and made me feel that I was one of her best friends. And your father was a great man. I shall never forget how many wonderful things he did quietly to help just plain, insignificant people. Come in, my dear. I’m honored to have you here. Come in, Philip. It’s nice of you to have looked me up.”

They followed the little lady into her sweet, quiet home that looked so livable and pleasant, and sat down, both feeling happy to be with her.

“Oh, I’m so glad you knew my dear mother and my father,” said Laurel.

“You look like your mother, my dear,” said Mrs. Gray. “She was a beautiful woman. You should be proud to look like her.”

“Oh, I am. It is good that you think I am like her. I shall enjoy knowing you so much, I am sure. I shall be so glad if you will be my friend.”

“Why, of course, my dear. I’ll love to be that. But I thought you had moved away somewhere. I haven’t heard that any of the Sheridan family were left in this part of the world.”

“She just came back to try living here,” explained Pilgrim. “She felt rather alone, and I told her I thought she would enjoy knowing you. You had always been so good to me, I dared to bring her here.”

“Well, that’s beautiful,” said Mrs. Gray. “And I shall be so glad if she will come often to see me. You know, I’m going to be very lonesome this winter. My nephew, who has been living with me since his wife died, has gone to Canada and joined the British army. He is already in England now, and so I am entirely alone. I’ll just love having company. And now, Phil, tell me all about yourself, your college, what you did, and where you are going now that you are a soldier.”

Pilgrim gave her a nice grin.

“Thanks for your interest,” he said. “I graduated all right. Did some athletic work and other things to help me through financially, and the next thing, of course, was to join the army. It seemed to be the right thing to do. Naturally it wasn’t just what I would have
chosen
to come next in life after I finished college, but it had to be, because war didn’t consult me when it decided to come our way. So I enlisted. My camp is down in Virginia just now, but there is likelihood we’ll be moved in a few days.”

“You’re home for the weekend? A furlough?”

“Not exactly,” said Pilgrim. “I got word the government wanted to buy my land for a munitions factory and got leave to come home and go through the formalities of the sale.”

“You don’t say! Now that’s interesting, isn’t it? But don’t you hate to give up the old home?”

“No,” said Pilgrim, a cloud coming over the brightness of his face. “I never had any love for it. The folks are all dead, you know, and there wasn’t much joy ever up there.”

“Yes, I remember,” the dear little woman sighed sympathetically. “Well, then it’s nice that you could sell it.”

“I thought so,” said Pilgrim.

Then the lady turned to Laurel.

“And now, tell me about you. Are you just here visiting, or are you coming back to live?”

“No, I’m not visiting,” said Laurel. “I have a job. Of course I’m not sure how long it will last or whether I can fill it. I’m to start Monday teaching in the high school where a teacher was sick and has gone to California.”

“Oh, my dear. Then you are going to be here. How fortunate for me! Then I may really hope to see you this winter. At least until you get into the life of the town, I suppose.”

“I don’t believe there is any life in this town that would keep me from visiting the new friend I think you look as if you might be.”

“You sweet child! And so you’re going to teach in the high school. What fortunate students to have a girl like you for their teacher!”

And so they talked on, getting better and better acquainted, and finally Mrs. Gray turned to Pilgrim. “Philip, did you say you are going to be here over Sunday?”

“Yes. I can’t leave till I have been up to the place to meet the engineers about the dividing lines. They want me to help locate the original surveyors’ marks. It may take some time.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Gray. “Well I’m glad you’re staying, for I thought it would be nice if you two were to take dinner with me tomorrow just to sort of cement our friendship and as a reminder of the days when you were a little boy and I knew you. Could you both do that?” She turned her glance from Pilgrim’s face to the sweet face of the girl. “Or had you both some other plan for the day, Miss Sheridan? Perhaps some of your old friends have already asked you? I don’t want to be selfish, of course.”

Laurel laughed a sweet ripple of a laugh. “My old friends, if there are any of them left here, don’t even know I have come back. No, I haven’t a thing to do tomorrow but to get through the day in a strange boardinghouse, so
I’ll
be just delighted to come, whatever Phil does.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for anything!” said Pilgrim with a look as if he had been invited into heaven for a few hours.

“Well, that will be just perfect!” said Mrs. Gray, her eyes shining. “And say, I wonder if I dare go a little farther and ask you if you would mind coming over early enough to go to church with me? Do you know, I always feel so lonely going to church alone since my nephew left me. It would be nice to have a couple of dear young people with me. And I kind of think you will enjoy the sweet, simple little church where I go. It isn’t a great church, and not many of them are wealthy, but they love the Lord, and I think you couldn’t help seeing how genuine they are.”

“Why of course we’ll go with you, Mrs. Gray,” said Laurel earnestly. “That is”—she suddenly looked toward Pilgrim—“I’ll be glad to go. I can’t answer for Mr. Pilgrim. I don’t know what his engagements are.”

“Engagements!” Pilgrim grinned. “ If I were unfortunate enough to have any hindering engagements, I would certainly cancel them. I’ll be here, Mother Gray, right on the dot. Will ten o’clock be time enough?”

“Oh,
surely!”
said the smiling lady. “And I’m as happy as a bird to think you are coming with me. Now, don’t hurry!” she said as the two young people arose. “Can’t you wait long enough to eat a few cookies? Philip, you used to like my cookies.”

“I sure did! They were swell!”

“And I’m just eager to taste them,” Laurel said, laughing.

A little while and they were on their way again. True, they had no other place to go, but both of them felt that they had had a reprieve. Strange, thought Laurel, that she should feel this way about a friend whom she had just picked out of the blue as it were. Of course he was all right. She remembered having seen him when he was a boy. He remembered her. She had heard of his success in college. He had demonstrated to her that he had respectable friends, and his behavior to her had been irreproachable. She had no trouble in her heart about that. Her only concern was that she should so soon have developed this great interest in him and that she should feel so unreasonably happy to think they were to have one more day together.

“Well, how do you like her?” asked Phil Pilgrim after they had driven a couple of blocks away from the little white house.

“Oh, I think she’s just
wonderful
. Yes, Phil, she’s all you said she was, and more. I just love her, and I’m so glad you took me there! It’s going to make a big difference in my winter to have a friend like that.”

“I thought maybe it would,” said Pilgrim slowly, thoughtfully. “It’s going to make me a lot happier about leaving you here alone.” And then suddenly he grew red and hot in the darkness. “Of course it’s none of my business,” he hurried to add. “I had no right to try and plan your life for you. With my few resources, it was presumption in me. But I thought maybe she might help you out sometime in an emergency. She did that for me more than once.”

“I see what you mean,” said Laurel gently, “and I thank you with all my heart. I’m going to take a lot of pleasure knowing her. I think she’s rare.”

They drove on into a moonlit world over some of the dear old road that both of them had known in their childhood, knitting up a friendship moment by moment that counted almost up to years before they turned and went back.

“I must get you home before it is noticeably late,” said Phil with a grin. “Your first night in that new boarding place, it wouldn’t do for you to be out too late with an unknown soldier.”

“Well, of course,” said Laurel. “If we were coming from a nightclub somewhere, nobody would think anything of it these days. But I’m glad you’re taking care of me. It is what my mother would appreciate, and I guess it will be good for my reputation as a schoolmarm, too.”

“Oh, I imagine so. But still, I don’t suppose that would count much as yet. But, by the way, how do you feel about that going-to-church business? Do you mind?”

“
Mind?
I think it’s
lovely
. I like it. Why? Don’t you?”

“Oh yes! I like Mrs. Gray’s way of looking at things. I never went to that place where she says she goes, but I’m sure it will be interesting. I don’t suppose it’s the church that your people attended.”

“I don’t care about that. But they must have gone to the same church when my mother was alive. Don’t you know she spoke of being in the same Ladies’ Aid and Missionary Society?”

“That’s true. But Mrs. Gray is one who would help out a new work if she thought it worthy. Still, we’ll see. The big church may have grown too worldly to please her. A good many churches seem to have got that way these days.”