Romance Classics (119 page)

Puzzled, Cherry answered, “Well, he wants me to, and I’m very fond of him. What’s up, Gran’sir?”

“It’s just that a very persistent rumor is going around that the Widow Marshall is tired of being a widow and that she and Job are seeing quite a bit of each other,” the Judge told her.

“You mean Betty Marshall’s after Job?” demanded Cherry hotly.

“So rumor has it.”

“Well, well,
well,”
murmured Cherry softly, and her eyes narrowed.

The Judge watched her for a moment, and when she seemed disinclined to speak, he said quietly, “A woman like Betty Marshall can be very dangerous, honey.”

“Dangerous?” Cherry repeated in a tone of amused disdain. “Why, she’s just a kid, Gran’sir.”

“She’s a young and very attractive widow, and she’s obviously tired of living at home with her family and would like a home of her own,
and
a husband.”

“And Job would give her a nice home and be a very good husband,” Cherry admitted slowly. “Is that what you’re telling me, Gran’sir?”

“I don’t usually interfere in your affairs or Loyce’s,” the Judge reminded her. “But I don’t like just sitting here helpless and watching you throw away something you may one day wake up and find that you really wanted very much.”

Cherry was alarmed and unable to conceal it.

“What do you think I should do, Gran’sir?” she asked as humbly as she had asked the same question when she had been a child.

“I think you should make up your mind once and for all whether or not you are in love with Job,” he told her firmly. “If you are not, then set him free to make a life of his own. If you are, then make up your mind if you want to marry him. It’s as simple as that, honey.”

“Well, yes, I suppose it is,” Cherry said unhappily.

“But you must be very sure, honey. Marriage is a long-term contract, and there are no options. And I strongly disapprove of divorce,” the Judge told her firmly. “I just thought you ought to know about Betty’s pursuit of Job. In fact, it could easily be, since she is young and very pretty and a fine little housekeeper, that Job is pursuing her.”

“It could be, at that,” Cherry said ruefully.

The Judge watched her and waited, and at last she said uncomfortably, “Honestly, Gran’sir, I’m not quite sure whether I want to marry Job or not. Oh, I’m very fond of him and we have fun together and all that. But is that being in love, enough love to get married on?”

The Judge grinned at her like an impish small boy.

“It’s been a great many years since I was qualified to answer that, honey,” he pointed out. “You’ll have to ask somebody a lot younger than I am if you hope to get an answer you can bank on. Maybe you’d better just ask your heart, honey, and follow whatever it tells you to do.”

“But the stupid thing won’t talk,” Cherry burst out childishly. “It purrs like a cream-fed kitten when I’m with Job, and goes all warm and melting when I hear his voice on the telephone; and then it just goes back to sleep again.”

“And that’s not much help in making up your mind?” asked the Judge. “How does it react to the thought of Job married to Betty Marshall?”

“It stands up on its hind legs and growls,” Cherry admitted. “That makes me a sort of dog in the manger, doesn’t it? That’s not a pretty picture either. I don’t like to behave like that.”

The Judge waited and watched her as she scowled thoughtfully.

“I’ll give it some thought,” she said at last.

“You do that, honey,” said the Judge.

Cherry nodded and bent to kiss him good night. But instead of going up to her room she went out on the wide verandah to the big swing that hung behind the curtain of vines at the end of the porch. She curled up in the swing and looked out over the sweep of mountains, and her thoughts were busy with Job and Betty Marshall.

She was still in the swing when Jonathan and Loyce came back. She stayed where she was, unwilling to intrude on their good nights. They paused on the steps, and Loyce turned and looked out over the starlit scene and drew a deep, unsteady breath.

“Oh, it’s been such a lovely evening.” She sighed. “I feel as if I’d just started living again. If only we find out-”

“We’ll find out that Weldon was on that plane and that you’ve been torturing yourself for nothing,” Jonathan told her, sharpness in his voice. “You are the loveliest girl he could ever have hoped to meet, and he would never have run out on you. That’s something you have to get into your mind here and now, because it’s what we will learn when my friends have been able to answer the wires I’ve sent.”

“I hope so, Jonny. Oh, I do hope so,” said Loyce softly, her voice slightly shaken.

“Well, we will,” said Jonathan, and held open the door for her. “I’m just as sure of it as if I had seen him board the plane myself.”

The door closed behind them, and Cherry sat on for a moment, puzzled and uneasy. Jonathan had said, “Weldon would never have run out on you.” Well, for Pete’s sake, Cherry asked herself, why should Loyce have thought that? How could she have? Weldon had been completely besotted about her. He’d hardly wanted to let her out of his sight.

Jonathan, Cherry recalled uneasily, had warned her that there was something behind Loyce’s deep grief that was pushing her toward the edge of mental illness. Could it be her doubt that Weldon had really died in that crash? Could she have believed that Weldon would use that crash and the fact there were no survivors, to run out on her? If Loyce had believed that, then Loyce was a doubled-starred chump.

Cherry got up at last, chilled by the crisp night air and her long vigil in the swing, and crept into the house. But it was a long time before she was finally able to fall asleep.

It was two days later that Jonathan asked to ride into town with Cherry when she went in for the mail and the marketing. She was glad of his company and chattered gaily as they drove the few miles to town. In fact, her chatter was so gay that Jonathan studied her curiously and broke in to say, amused, “I’m not quite sure if all this light chit-chat is because you despise me and would like me to get going.”

Cherry stared at him in surprise.

“How could I possibly despise you after all you’ve done for Loyce?” she protested.

Jonathan scowled at her. “What have I done for Loyce?” he wanted to know.

Cherry flushed but gave her attention to driving. After a moment she confessed, “I’m a stinker, Jonny. I was on the verandah when you brought her home from dinner in town night before last. And I heard enough to make me believe that you’d found out what was worrying her so terribly and were clearing it up for her. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, Jonny, truly, but I may as well admit I’m glad I did. I’ve been so worried about her.”

Jonathan scowled straight ahead for a long moment, and they were just entering the limits of the small town when he said quietly, “I can’t tell you anything about it, Cherry, except that she had been terribly depressed about this Hammett fellow.”

“She believes he wasn’t on the plane and just used the crash as a means of running out on her,” Cherry interrupted. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“And you don’t believe it?”

“Good golly grief — no!” Cherry exploded. “Nobody could who had ever seen them together. Why, he was completely insane about her. If she so much as left the room, he wandered around like a lost soul until she came back. How could she possibly believe that he wasn’t deeply in love with her?”

“She has a very deep-rooted inferiority complex, and it’s been giving her a very bad time ever since the plane crash,” Jonathan said quietly.

“But aren’t there ways of proving whether or not he was on the plane?” demanded Cherry. “And if he wasn’t, then where is he? He couldn’t just vanish into thin air; he was a fairly important member of the British Embassy staff.”

“I’m having private detectives and a friend who is in the newspaper business check all angles,” Jonathan told her. “That’s why I was eager to get in town today; not to pick up mail but to make a few long distance telephone calls. If you’ll drop me off at the telephone exchange and pick me up there when you’re ready to go back to the Lodge, I’ll see what my friend and the detectives have found out.”

Cherry said, as she slowed the car for a traffic light, “So Loyce got the idea about private detectives from Sandra.”

“It would seem so.”

Cherry nodded thoughtfully. “Then I’m glad you gave Sandra a check. I’d send her one if I knew where she was.”

“Oh, Sandra will be all right,” said Jonathan, and now his tone was grim. “There’s the exchange just ahead. I’ll be ready to go back when you are. And thanks for the lift.”

“Thanks for the lift you’ve given Loyce!” said Cherry, and beamed warmly at him as he got out of the car and crossed the sidewalk.

She turned and drove back to the town’s proudest possession, a big supermarket. There was an enormous parking lot, and as she parked her car and locked it, a group came out of the market and walked toward a battered but dependable-looking car.

Cherry was so absorbed in her thoughts that she all but ran into the girl who had suddenly stopped directly in her path.

“Hello, Cherry,” said Betty Marshall.

Betty’s golden head was bare, and the sunlight glinted lovingly on its golden waves, held in place by a narrow blue ribbon. Her gingham dress was blue and white-checked and had been washed until it had faded and was shrunken. On her feet she wore canvas sneakers and no hose. And yet Cherry had to admit that Betty was lovely.

In spite of herself, Cherry felt her spirits droop slightly as she chatted for a moment with the girl and fought hard to keep Job’s name from her lips. Betty’s father, a tall, lean, raw-boned man, hailed the girl sharply, and she smiled wistfully at Cherry and ran to crowd herself into the old car among the half-dozen children ranging in ages from five or six up to ten or twelve. There was scarcely room in the car for all of them and as Cherry watched Betty force her way into the back of the car and heard the children screaming at her and pushing her, Cherry was deeply sorry for Betty. No wonder Betty wanted to marry Job or anybody who would take her out of the overcrowded home in which she was no longer welcome.

She forced a chuckle as she selected a marketing cart and started filling the list Muv had given her.

Us Brambletts, she mocked herself ruefully, surely take a heap of convincing from our men folks.

She hoped vainly for a glimpse of Job as she finished her errands and drove back to the telephone exchange to pick up Jonathan, who was waiting for her with a smile that lifted her heart. For it told her that his friends had been able to give him news that would banish Loyce’s grief and depression.

“Is it all right, Jonny?” she asked anxiously.

“He was aboard the plane. There is no doubt of that,” he told her.

“Oh, Jonny, let’s hurry back and tell her,” Cherry breathed, and looked up at him in eager warmth and happiness.

“Let’s,” Jonathan agreed. As they turned to drive along the main street, several people called out to her and blew their horns in greeting as she passed their parked cars. But Cherry was so excited, so exhilarated by the news Jonathan was taking to Loyce, that she neither saw nor heard them.

Back at the Lodge, Elsie and Eben came out to help unload the marketing, and Jonathan asked, “Where is Miss Loyce?”

“Oh, she’s down at the barn looking after that new batch of pheasants that just hatched out,” Eben answered. Jonathan nodded and hurried around the house and down toward the barn.

Loyce was just emerging from the pheasants’ cage when she saw Jonathan. Hastily she locked the door and came swiftly to meet him.

“Come along,” said Jonathan, and took her hand and drew her with him down the trail to the place where they had had lunch that day that now seemed a century before.

Loyce looked anxiously at him, and something in his face gave away the news he had to tell her. Her heart sang a small, frightened song as they reached the spot and he drew a thick envelope from his pocket.

“There is not the faintest doubt that Weldon Hammett was aboard that plane when it crashed,” he told her gravely. “He did not run out on you and you should be ashamed that you ever thought he would.”

He placed the envelope in her hands, and she dropped down on the large flat rock where they had had their lunch and held the envelope with hands that shook as tears slid down her face.

“Oh, my darling,” she whispered so softly that the words barely reached Jonathan. Knowing they were not meant for him, he walked away from her, leaving her alone in that moment of healing peace.

She wept there as she had not wept since the news of the crash. They were tears that came from her heart, but they came, too, from wounded pride and self-respect that beneath the healing tears grew sound and free again.

When at last Jonathan came back to her, she sat with the sheets of paper in her hands and looked up at him with eyes washed clean of tears. And on her face there was a radiance that seemed to bathe Jonathan in its lovely glow.

“I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you, Jonny,” she said softly, her voice husky with tears.

Jonathan looked down at her where she sat on the big rock, her face lifted, her eyes soft and warm despite the recent tears. And there was that in his eyes that made her catch her breath on a small, startled gasp. And then Jonathan smiled at her.

“Oh, we’ll think of something one of these days,” he told her, and his tone made the words a promise that brought a soft touch of carnation-pink to her tear-streaked face.

His tone, the look in his eyes brought her back to an awareness of her recent tears, and she got to her feet with a touch of the endearing awkwardness of a child.

“I must look a sight,” she stammered. “I don’t weep prettily. I get all bleary-eyed and red-nosed and ugly.”

“Loyce,” Jonathan’s voice was stern, as his hands caught her by the shoulders and gave her a shake, “you are never, so long as you live, going to say or even think anything like that about yourself. Do you understand?”

“Well, I just meant that no woman looks attractive when she’s crying,” she stammered.