Romance Classics (3 page)

Mrs. Parker’s eyes were derisive, her mouth bitter.

“Oh, and you are not afraid of trusting a woman who loves and forgets so readily, Mr. Donaldson? How very broadminded of you!”

“I would trust Geraldine with my life,” said Phil quietly.

“How very touching!” said Mrs. Parker acidly. “I seem to remember she had Tip as completely bemused, poor, dear boy! He was so certain of her love for him, I’m sure he would never have believed she could forget him so readily — in a matter of a few months.”

Geraldine sat very still, her hands clenched tightly together, her eyes blurred with tears she was fighting desperately not to let fall. She could not have spoken if her life had depended on it. She had endured so many bitter, degrading scenes with Tip’s mother. She knew all the inflections of a voice that was always consciously musical, poised, saying gently things that bit and stung like acid and always left a bruise more painful than a physical blow could have been.

“I’m sorry you take this attitude, Mrs. Parker,” said Phil at last. His manner was disarming, almost friendly, despite the tautness of his month and the bright, hard anger in his eyes. “After all, Geraldine is not yet twenty, and her husband has been dead almost two years. I do not believe that he would want her to go on grieving her life away for him. I think, if he was the man his friends seem to think him, he would want her to marry again, to have children perhaps, a home, someone to take care of her.”

Mrs. Parker was gray, her eyes blazing, but she managed a thin little laugh. “Oh, dear me, you need never worry about Geraldine’s being taken care of. Girls like Geraldine always have some man anxious to look after them!”

Phil stood up and held out his hand to Geraldine, ignoring the older woman. “Come on, darling, you don’t have to endure any more of this.”

Geraldine put her shaking hand in his and let him draw her to her feet. She went out of the room with him, with bowed head, stumbling a little until Phil put his arm about her and guided her to the car. She took with her the memory of Mrs. Parker, looking shrunken, her face gray-white.

In the car, Geraldine put her face in her hands, and for a moment gave way to the sick feeling of pain and helplessness and embarrassment that had tortured her. Phil, his jaw set and hard, sent the car down the drive and along the highway. When they reached town she was outwardly composed and steady.

Geraldine’s home was old-fashioned, pleasantly shabby, good-sized and comfortable looking. Beth Foster’s flower garden still boasted zinnias, marigolds, asters and chrysanthemums just coming into bud.

As the green convertible stopped at the gate, Geraldine said eagerly, “Stay for supper and take potluck?”

Phil beamed happily. “Swell! I’d love to! Sure your mother won’t mind?”

“Mother adores last-minute guests! She never bothers about trying to impress them; she holds the theory that what’s good enough for the family is good enough for company — and there’s always more than enough!” answered Geraldine proudly.

Phil swung open the gate and she walked ahead of him. As he followed, he asked quietly, “We tell them, of course — your mother and father?”

“Of course,” answered Geraldine. “You needn’t dread another scene. They won’t make one.”

“I didn’t for a moment think they would,” Phil assured her so confidently that she glowed a little and slipped her hand in his.

Geraldine led the way in and Phil followed her, his eyes adoring her, his smile warm and tender. Beth Foster, in a neat print dress beneath a gay but quite practical peach-colored apron, stood at the kitchen table beating eggs in a big yellow bowl.

“Hello, darling,” she greeted her daughter abstractedly. “I swear I can’t remember whether that recipe calls for three eggs or four — Oh, I thought you were alone,” she broke off in surprise, as she saw Phil in the doorway.

“Mom, this is Phil — Mr. Donaldson, my boss,” said Geraldine, dropping a light kiss on her mother’s neat brown hair.

Beth said cheerfully, “I’m so glad you dropped in, Mr. Donaldson. You’re staying for supper, I hope. It’s meat loaf and rice pudding. Not fancy, but filling!”

“Thanks, I’d love to. It sounds great!”

Beth smiled at Phil. “It would, to anybody who lives at the Inn,” she agreed lightly. “You worked late today, didn’t you?”

“Only until three, and then we drove out to Marshalls’ and had a marvelous luncheon — ” Geraldine broke off to ask, quietly, “Where’s Dad?”

“Out in the garden,” answered her mother and went briskly back to beating the eggs. Deciding that if three eggs were good, four would be better, she added another with the lavishness of a woman who knows her hens can be depended on in a pinch. “He’s doing things to the asparagus bed. It’s very embarrassing to a man in his position not to be able to boast about his garden!”

“It might be. People would probably doubt the quality of his seeds, fertilizer and such,” laughed Geraldine and added, “What do you want me to do?”

“Run along and find your father. Everything’s almost ready and the table has been set. Get your father in and make him wash up. That’s a job for anybody!”

Geraldine laughed and led the way through the back hall across the old-fashioned back porch that was the family dining room in summer. There was a walk, bricked and broken so that one walked cautiously, that led out beyond the well, and so through a fence into the vegetable garden. At the left the old carriage house with its four rooms upstairs that had once been the coachman’s domicile, shielded the bed where a stout gray-haired man forked manure into an asparagus bed.

“Hi, Dad,” Geraldine greeted him youthfully, and Phil was enchanted by the way she had changed since she had entered her own home. She seemed younger, gay and carefree and very sweet. “I’ve brought you a visitor.”

“If it’s somebody wanting to know why his asparagus hasn’t come up, I wouldn’t be knowing — the blamed stuff!” answered Tom Foster, and rested contentedly on his spade as Geraldine introduced Phil and the two men shook hands.

“The only thing I know about asparagus is that it comes in cans — and that I don’t like it,” Phil assured him.

Tom nodded. “Sound fellow, Gerry,” he told her gravely. “Very sound!”

Geraldine laughed and thrust her arm through her father’s, and said firmly, “Well, maybe if you’d let the stuff alone, and stop poking at it, it might decide to grow. And anyway, give it a rest for tonight. Mother’s got supper almost ready, and you know what she says about getting you in and cleaned up!”

“Ah, dinner,” said Tom and drove his spade deep into the ground and turned to walk back to the house. “My wife, Mr. Donaldson, is a truly remarkable woman. She’s the only woman in Marthasville I’ve never heard complaining of the servant problem.”

“Incredible!” murmured Phil, suitably impressed.

“Of course, she’s never had a servant, so perhaps her knowledge of the subject may have kept her silent. Still, a truly remarkable woman!” said Tom happily, and added slyly, “I might add my daughter takes after her mother’s side of the family.”

Geraldine laughed again, and her hand tightened on her father’s arm, and in the dusk, Phil found her other hand and closed his on it firmly.

When they were all settled to the business of eating, Geraldine looked at her mother and father; her eyes were bright, and there was a little fan of carnation pink in her cheek
as she said softly, “Mother — Dad, there is something you two ought to know. Phil has asked me to marry him. And I said I would.”

There was a stunned instant, when Beth and Tom stared at her, then at each other, and finally at Phil.

“Gerry, dear!” said her mother on a small, shaken breath.

Tom cleared his throat noisily, and then looked abashed at the noise.

Phil said quietly, “I hope that you won’t mind too much. I’ll do everything in my power to make her happy.”

“Mind?”
Beth’s voice shook a little. “I’m so tickled I could howl!”

“Me, too,” said Tom huskily.

Geraldine’s eyes brimmed with laughter that was warm and tender. “You can see, darling, how anxious they are to get rid of me.”

Beth wiped her eyes on her napkin and said unsteadily, “You know how true that is, Mr. Donaldson.”

“Of course I do — and the name is Phil,” he cut in quickly, with a warm smile.

“Thank you, Phil. It’s j-j-just that it’s almost broken our hearts to see her so white and grieving and — sort of lost and forlorn. I’m so terribly glad — ” Beth’s voice broke, despite her effort at a smile.

Phil said gravely, “I can’t tell you what it means to me to know tha$$ you are willing to take me on faith, since you know nothing about me.”

Beth protested, “Oh, but we
do,
Phil. Goodness, we know just about all there is to know about you. Why, Gerry’s talked of little else. Darling, I’m sorry,” she answered Geraldine’s mirthful, embarrassed eyes. “Did I say something wrong? I’ve known you were
almost
in love with him for the longest time! I was terribly glad, but I was a little afraid that he might be — well, stupid enough not to fall in love with you back!”

Puzzled, she looked up at the shout of laughter.

“Now, what have I said that was so funny?” she demanded.

Geraldine hugged her and Phil and Tom looked at her fondly.

“Well, anyway,” said Beth almost huffily, “if Gerry wants
to marry you, that’s her business! I’m sure you’re very nice or else Gerry wouldn’t be in love with you.”

“I don’t kid myself that Gerry is head over heels in love with me, Mrs. Foster,” said Phil quietly. “It would take more of a man than I could ever hope to be to take Tip’s place in a girl’s heart.”

Beth stared at him, wide-eyed.

“You don’t think she loves you better than she did Tip, and yet you want to marry her?” she protested.

Phil put out his hand and laid it over Geraldine’s. His smile was tender now, his voice gentle.

“I love her well enough to want her happiness above everything else in the world,” he said. “I know it’s going to be a long time before she can forget Tip — perhaps she can’t, ever. But all that is over, and she is too fine and sweet to go on alone, grieving for something she can never have again.”

“Oh, but, Phil, you’re quite wrong,” Beth protested earnestly. “I’m her mother and I know her so well and I’m
quite
sure she loves you. I know her much better than you do, you see.”

Geraldine laughed and hugged her mother and said comfortingly, “Never mind, mom, I’ll convince him!”

“Well, I should hope so,” said Beth, slightly ruffled.

Phil beamed at her and at Tom and said simply, “It’s going to be fun to be married into this family. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a home, or a family. My father died when I was six, and Mother when I was fourteen.”

Beth said swiftly, “You poor boy!”

“That settles it! You’ll be well and thoroughly familied from now on, son,” said Tom firmly, and his eyes were kind and warm and friendly.

“I hope so, sir. I like the idea.”

Geraldine had dreaded the first week at the office when the whole town would know that she was going to be married again. But before the first day was well advanced, she saw that there had been no reason for her brief discomfort. People were glad of her happiness, she felt, as they stopped her and offered good wishes.

Then two weeks after the announcement of her engagement, Geraldine and Beth went up to Atlanta to select furnishings for the gay little house that was already beginning to emerge from the rejuvenated carriage house.

She remembered her elopement with Tip, when neither had carried with them so much as a toothbrush. She had shopped hilariously at a small settlement store near the mountain cabin where they had spent that poignantly brief honeymoon that was to be all the married life she and Tip were ever to know.

Looking back, she shuddered a little and remembered that even in those brief days, young and silly as she had been, there had been a terror that she had never faced or acknowledged. Perhaps a premonition that this was all she and Tip were ever to have of love and living together; perhaps that was what had made those few days so exquisite, so unforgettable. And in her heart, even now in her great happiness, she wept for the two children who had raced lightheartedly into a marriage over which, from its very beginning, had lain the bitter shadow of death and desolation.

She and Beth came back on a train that readied Marthasville at 6:10 in the afternoon. Tom and Phil were waiting for them. There was something odd and strained in their faces, but Geraldine was so glad to see Phil after what seemed like an age-long absence — it had been two days and nights — that she was not quite conscious of the curious, veiled glances that the station loungers turned her way.

Tom hustled them into his old sedan before they could do more than call a greeting to a friend here and there. And as the sedan rattled through town, with Tom at the wheel, Beth beside him, Geraldine drew closer to Phil, slid her hand in his and demanded very softly, “Did you miss me, darling?”

His hand closed painfully on hers and his jaw had a set, stern look as he said half under his breath, “I — I’ll always miss you, if you’re gone from me five minutes.”

In the dusk that filled the old sedan she could only guess at his expression. But the clasp of his fingers on hers, the tone of his voice, made her breath come a little faster, and she was almost giddy with happiness.

The car turned in at the break in the white picket fence, went up the straggling drive and stopped. As Tom helped Beth out and turned for a fleeting moment to look at Phil, Geraldine knew that something was wrong. Knew it, with a little sudden sharp stab of terror that was like a chill finger against her heart.

“Dad, what — ?” she gasped.

Tom said almost curtly. “Inside with you, kid.”

Beth looked at him swiftly, and her eyes widened. But without a word she turned and led the way into the house.

Geraldine stood before her father, looking from him to Phil, an icy hand closing about her young heart. But her voice was quite steady. “All right, Dad — let’s have it. Straight from the shoulder, like always.”