Substitute Guest (12 page)

As the numb flesh thawed out, their blood began to flow in its natural course again, and the warm food renewed their strength. The young men revived perceptibly.

“Well, I feel pretty good after all,” said Alan, lifting first one foot and then the other as he slowly, cautiously arose from the table. “I didn’t think I’d ever be able to use these arms and legs again, did you, Lance?”

“Well no,” responded Lance, “I thought we’d have to have artificial ones if we ever lived to need them.”

So they laughed and joked about their recent peril, and the family devoured them with thankful eyes and tried to smile, but the anxiety was too recent to warrant much mirth about it for them.

“Well now,” said Mother Devereaux, looking around radiantly upon her family circle, “the next thing on the program of course is to hang up the stockings, but if you boys would rather just be tucked into bed first it will be all right. The girls can hang up the stockings for you.”

“No, indeed!” called out Lance, who had dropped down into a chair to save his ankle, and now dragged himself to the living room door. “We aren’t going to be cheated out of that fun, are we, Alan? That’s what we hurried home for, to be in time to hang up our stockings.”

“I’d hate to be left out of anything that’s going,” said Alan pleasantly, “but you know, Lance, I don’t belong here. I’m only something the storm blew down on your tender mercies. I don’t want to intrude. If you’ll just let me lie here on the dining room couch till it’s daylight, I’ll try to take myself off out of your way.”

“The idea!” cried both of the girls. “When we’ve got your stocking all ready to hang up! Planning to walk out on us! Just like that!”

“Nothing doing, old man!’ said Lance, slapping his new friend feebly on the shoulder with his best arm. “If you didn’t earn your way into this family, and your right to hang up your stocking with the best of us when you carried me though that blast, I don’t know who belongs. Man alive, if you hadn’t stuck to me and dragged me in I’d have laid down in the snow and given up. I was all in, and that’s the truth. When that ankle doubled under me the pain was something awful, and sickened me. You saved my life, boy, and you talk about not belonging!”

It was Father Devereaux who was beside the stranger instantly, with his hand upon his shoulder.

“Friend,” he said earnestly,
“son
, you’re welcome, and you’re one of us. We shouldn’t be happy to see you go till the Christmas is past, unless you have someone who has a deeper claim upon you, and who would be grieving at your absence.” He peered into the young man’s eyes with something like a searching question in his own.

“I haven’t!” said Alan huskily, shaking his head. “My folks are all gone. Just friends left, but they wouldn’t care a cent whether I came or went. I’m free as far as that’s concerned, but I couldn’t think of butting in where I don’t belong.”

It was left for Mother Devereaux to answer that, and she came over and put a gentle arm around the young man’s broad shoulders and laid soft lips against his cheek and kissed him.

“Of course you belong,” she said tenderly. “We couldn’t think of letting you go! We want you!”

Alan was deeply touched. His eyes filled with sudden tears.

“That’s wonderful of you,” he said huskily. “I appreciate that, and with all my heart I’ll stay. But you must promise not to upset any of your plans. If you’ll just let me park on that couch I’ll be perfectly comfortable. I heard someone say you were expecting another guest, and I couldn’t think of crowding him out.”

Instinctively his eyes sought Daryl’s, and he saw the deep shadow come suddenly into her eyes, and her lovely lips set in a thin, sharp line. She lifted her chin just a little and a proud, tired look came and covered the sorrow in her eyes. As if she felt that he had addressed his remarks to her, she answered, “The fr—the
guest
who was to have occupied that room didn’t come!” She managed a gracious smile to cover the bleakness in her statement, and suddenly Alan remembered the telephone conversation he had heard just outside his door while he was dressing for the expedition in the storm. And all at once he longed to comfort her.

“And may I be a substitute guest?” he asked. “At least until the other man can get here? He’ll be coming later, I imagine.”

“No,” said Daryl quite decidedly, “he won’t be coming later.” She shut her lips thinly again. “At least, if he does, he won’t be staying,” she added with finality, and Alan found himself strangely glad that she felt that way.

But Lance looked up in surprise.

“What’s that, Daryl, Harold not coming? That’s hard lines. The storm keep him back?” His voice was very polite, but they all remembered that Lance had just got in from a six-hour battle with the storm, on foot, while Harold had a car and reasonably good highways all the way.

“No,” said Daryl quite calmly, as if she were facing the truth and did not wish to hide it, “he went somewhere else!”

The mother looked up.

“Why don’t you explain, dear, that his employer had a gathering at which he expected his presence?” she said apologetically.

Daryl opened her lips to speak and then closed them tightly. Alan could see that she did not want to talk about it.

“Well then,” he said cheerfully, “if you’re willing to accept me as a substitute guest, I’ll be happy to endeavor to fill the assignment, but I still suggest you let me sleep on the couch and not make extra trouble for you.”

“Man, don’t you know this house has rooms upon rooms, and they’re always in a perpetual state of being ready for guests? My mother just loves company. Don’t get difficult. That room you dressed in is yours as long as you’ll stay. Am I right or not, folks?”

“You’re right of course, son,” said Father Devereaux. “You’ll find all your things from your car there, Mr. Monteith. I took the liberty of getting Bill Gates to tow your car into the village for repairs, and we brought your suitcases and packages in so you wouldn’t have to go out in the storm to get them when you got back.”

“Say, you’re kind,” said Alan Monteith, greatly touched. “It’s like having a father again and being taken care of. I’d almost forgotten how that felt!”

“I hope you’ll let us recall it to you often after this,” said the old man genially.

“Well, I certainly would like to,” said Alan heartily.

“Okay, that being settled, let’s go!” said Lance. “Where are the stockings? Let’s get to the next act, or I’ll fall asleep again.”

Lance limped over to the living room with Ruth, his hand resting on Ruth’s shoulder, and her eyes were shining and happy as she looked up to him. Alan watched them a second, caught the stricken look on Daryl’s face, and drew himself up from the chair, hurrying stiffly over to her side.

“Say, what is this stocking business? You’ll have to induct me into its principles. I haven’t hung my stocking up since I was a little kid and Mother helped me pin it on the wall over the register, which was the only chimney we had in the apartment where we lived.”

Daryl flashed a sympathetic look at him and welcomed his company with a smile.

“Here’s your stocking,” she said, affecting a cheerfulness he knew she did not feel, for he saw the purple depths in her big, troubled blue eyes.

He took the long brightly striped stocking.

“My stocking?” he said, pretending to study it. “I don’t just seem to remember it. Was that ever my stocking?”

“No, but it is now,” Daryl said with a laugh. “See, it’s marked ‘Pilgrim and Stranger Man,’” she said, pointing to a marker fastened to its top with a safety pin. “We couldn’t remember what you said your name was so we called you ‘Pilgrim and Stranger.’”

“Yes, but that doesn’t fit anymore,” said Alan gravely. “I’m no longer a pilgrim or a stranger. We’ll have to change that. I’ve been sort of adopted into the family, but I guess it’s a little soon to presume upon that. Suppose we make it ‘The Substitute Guest’? How will that do? Do you mind?” He looked up suddenly, keenly, his fountain pen out ready to write, and studied her eyes. Lovely eyes. He never had seen such eyes.

“Mind?” said Daryl. “Why, that’s lovely. Of course not.”

His eyes lingered on hers. For an instant. And then he wrote swiftly and handed the card back to her to pin on the stocking.

“Now, where do we go from here?”

Daryl gave a real genuine little laugh and led the way to the fireplace where four other stockings of various lengths and sizes swayed gracefully in the firelight.

Daryl instructed him how to hang it by the loop, and he made great ceremony of the act, patting it as it hung long and limp at the end of the row.

“There, little stocking, hang still and don’t be filled with great expectations. You know you only belong to a substitute guest and can’t expect much, an apple or a few grains of corn perhaps, but don’t let your fancy fly to toy horses and soldiers and that sort of thing. We weren’t expected, you know, and therefore aren’t in the running. I’ll maybe steal in here when Santa is gone and stuff you out with a newspaper I have in my suitcase so you’ll look like the others, but don’t let on it’s a newspaper. You’ve got to be polite, for it’s very nice of them to let us spend Christmas with them at all, you understand. Now good night, and mind you be a good stocking till I come back to get you in the morning.”

They shouted with laughter over his comical tone, and then they hurried the weary young men away to their rest, with injunctions not to wake up in the morning until they really felt rested and ready.

So Mother Devereaux went to perform a last little rite or two over the turkey, Father to make sure the hens and Chrystobel were really comfortable in the barn, and the girls went laughing up to Daryl’s room where they were sleeping together tonight. And the storm raged on, white, white, white, everywhere deep and drifting.

Alan found a bright fire burning in the fireplace, and a nice hot water bag in his bed under the covers. Gratefully he climbed into the warm flannel pajamas he found laid out on the bed, not even considering his own fine silk ones in the suitcase, and got into the big soft bed that smelled of lavender and was plentifully supplied with blankets. He lay there looking happily out at the wide comfortable room in the flickering firelight, thinking what the other fellow whose place he was taking had missed, and why he was willing to miss it; wondering if he wouldn’t turn up in the morning and spoil it all; wondering if the girl with the lovely eyes really cared so very much; trying to recall her shocked voice earlier in the afternoon as she answered the telephone.

Then sweet drowsiness stole over him, and he fancied he was out somewhere in the storm again, battling his way to this lovely quiet haven, where Christmas was real, nothing seemed hard or artificial, and God still reigned in His heaven.

D
emeter Cass was clever. She should have been a detective. And she never gave up until she got what she wanted.

However, her operations with regard to Alan Monteith were somewhat interrupted by the arrival of her hosts and an influx of guests, which necessitated dressing for dinner. It was half past nine when dinner was over, and then there was dancing and several new men whom she wanted to try out, and it was not until after midnight that she remembered that she had not yet got in touch with Alan, and that he had not arrived or telephoned.

They had danced the Christmas in with an odd, barbaric sort of dance, having costumed themselves in red with jingling bells and grotesque masks, though many of them didn’t need those, having quite artificial ones of their own. They had danced with their right arms curved over their heads, shaking little carved ivory rattles with tiny silver bells, and had sung “Good King Wenceslas” and the few other Christmas songs they could remember. They had ushered the day in with a riot, by drinking more than usual. And suddenly Demeter felt that it was time to do something more about Alan.

Carefully she questioned the servants to find if he had telephoned or arrived quietly, but found he had not, so she went to the telephone again.

It mattered not to her that it was long past one o’clock and that she knew the house to which she was telephoning had serious illness. Nothing ever mattered to Demeter except what she personally wanted, so she put in her call.

She got the whole Farley-Watt household out of bed, servants and householders, and disturbed the nurse and even the patient, who woke suddenly and cried out to know what was the matter. And then questioning the frightened old man, who had feared he didn’t know what when he heard that shrill ring in the middle of the night, she demanded to know
why
Mr. Alan Monteith had not called her.

Mr. Watt was too bewildered and weary at first to get it all straight and find out what she wanted, but when she finally made him understand he admitted that Mr. Monteith had come and that he didn’t believe anybody had remembered to tell him the message that she had left several times earlier in the afternoon.

Demeter Cass minced no words in telling him what she thought of that, and paid no heed to his dignified explanation that his wife was seriously ill, and that their anxiety was such that they hadn’t remembered anything else. She went on to demand that Alan come to the telephone at once, and when she was told he wasn’t there, had been gone several hours, she declaimed over that. What were they thinking of to let him go out in such a storm? And where did he go? Where was he now? She must get in touch with him at once. It was a most important matter! She made it appear that it might be even a matter of life and death.

“I am sorry,” said the old man. “We tried to keep the young men all night, but they refused to stay. They seemed to be anxious to get away at once. We loaned them snowshoes—”

“Well, where were they going?” demanded Demeter.

“Well, I can’t exactly say,” he answered thoughtfully. “I assumed that they were going to the home of the other young man.”

“What other young man? What was his name? Where did he live?”

“If you will excuse me a minute I will get the address,” answered Mr. Watt. “I took both of their names and addresses. They were most kind to us in our distress, coming so far in the storm, leaving their own affairs—”