Substitute Guest (3 page)

Alan looked around him. A perfect mountain of snow rose on both sides and ahead of him. The steady, persistent fall of the snow was slantwise now, in little fine even lines, impenetrable as if they were opaque. Now and again a gust of wild wind would snap at the snow, and toss it hither and yon, clearing a space here and there for a second, and flinging blinding whiteness in great eddies.

With a sinking heart he looked around him, wondering if he would have to go on foot all the way back to that garage to get help. He was no mechanic, and if he had been, no one could work on a car in that blinding storm and cold. It would have to be towed back to the garage for repairs probably. If there were only some place he could go to telephone for a man to come and get him! He must get on with that medicine. It was quarter to four now, and at six the medicine would be needed. Death would be waiting to snatch its victim, the woman whom he had pledged his honor to save!

He opened the car door and stepped out into the depth of snow, trying to peer around. There was a house on his left. He could make out the outline of a long low roof capped deeply with snow, an old farmhouse. Lights! There were lights in the house. Colored lights! A Christmas tree! His heart leaped up with joy. People who had a lighted Christmas tree might have a telephone. But first perhaps he would look at his engine and get a general idea of what might be the mater.

He wallowed forward and lifted the hood, peering helplessly down as the snow gleefully hurried inside, but his inexperienced eyes could not tell what might have happened. Neither his expensive education nor his inherited legal mind could help him in this predicament. He closed the hood quickly and turned toward the house. He was suddenly aware that his shoes were wet, and the snow was inside them, making quick work with his ankles and feet, and that the wind was icy and biting. His hands were already numb with cold, for he had foolishly taken off his gloves when he looked at the engine. How quickly cold could get in its work, even through an imported overcoat! How cruelly the snow stung his face and tangled in his lashes so he could not see.

But the house was there, and he was headed toward it. There must be a front walk somewhere, though his uncertain feet could not find it, but with head down against the wind he struggled on, and now as he ventured to look up again he saw the door ahead, and a girl’s face pressed close to the snow-rimmed window, looking out.

The wind tore the breath from him as he groped toward the door, but then just as he came blunderingly up to the porch the door was opened and a strong arm reached out and pulled him into sudden warmth and light and cheer! It seemed like stepping out of horror into paradise!

T
he Devereaux family had been up since before dawn.

Of course dawn in December did not break early, but it seemed exceedingly early to them all, they were so filled with excitement, almost as if all four of them, father, mother, son, and daughter, were just four children.

It was to be a special Christmas, the first since the children had finished college and come home to stay, the parents fondly supposed. They were all thrilled with the joy of it. Not even a sullen sky, which the day reluctantly parted to let in a somber gloom, could dampen their ardor.

“It looks as if it were going to snow!” said Father Devereaux hopefully as he wound the warm woolen muffler over his ears and around his throat, and buttoned his big coat to the chin.

“It sure does!” echoed Lance, stamping his feet into his galoshes and stooping to fasten them. “It wouldn’t seem like a real Christmas without snow!”

“Wouldn’t it be just perfect to have a white Christmas!” flashed Daryl. “Oh, suppose it should snow enough for sledding! How grand that would be!”

“It may,” said the father with another glance at the drabness out the window. “A few flakes can do a good deal in twenty-four hours if they really get down to business. And that sky looks like business, or I miss my guess!”

“Well, you’d better get going then,” admonished Mother Devereaux. “It will be a lot easier lugging a big tree home before the snow gets started. A blinding snowstorm doesn’t make pleasant traveling.”

“Oh, we’ll get home before that, Mother!” the son said, laughing. “We’re only going up on Pine Ridge. It’s not so far.”

“Oh, that’s good,” said the mother, drawing a sigh of relief. “Your father said you might be going up on the far mountain.”

“That was only in case we don’t find the right tree on Pine Ridge, Mother,” said the father, twinkling. “Daryl has given her specifications for height and width and we’re not coming back till we can fill them.” He gave a loving smile toward the daughter.

“Yes,” said the son, “we’re going to have the swellest tree we can find. But don’t you worry. I’m sure there are plenty of trees on Pine Ridge. I’ve had my eye on one ever since fall, if some other fellow hasn’t beaten me to it. But if we should be late don’t you worry. We’re going to be tasty in our selection.”

He gave his mother a resounding kiss as he took the package of sandwiches she gave him and stuffed them in his pocket. “We ought to be back in good shape around noon, or maybe before.”

They started out into the penetrating gloom, and the two women stood at the door and watched them away, then turned back to the bright kitchen and attacked the mountain of work they had planned for the day.

“Well,” said the mother briskly, “we can get a lot of work done with our men out of the way and be ready to enjoy them when they get back. You do the breakfast dishes, Daryl, while I mix up the doughnuts, and then you can fry them while I roll out the crust for the pies. I think we ought to have plenty of pies, don’t you? Young folks always like pies.” She drew a deep breath and set her lips firmly in a pleasant line. “Will mince and pumpkin be enough or would you think an apple pie would be good to have on hand, too? In this weather they keep indefinitely, of course.”

If her daughter had been watching her closely she might have sensed that there was something a bit forced in the very pleasantness of her smile, as she brought out the memory that there were to be guests before the day was over. But Daryl was absorbed in her own thoughts. There were starry points of happiness in her sweet eyes as she lifted them to meet her mother’s.

“Mince and pumpkin will be plenty, I’m sure,” she answered. “Don’t the new curtains in the living room look beautiful from here!”

She stood in the dining room door looking across toward the living room windows, and her mother came to stand beside her for an instant, feeling the thrill of joy at the sweet companionship of the day.

“Yes,” she assented. “They are lovely and sheer. I was afraid they were going to look cheap, but they don’t. I like the way you’ve looped them back with just that broad band of the fabric; and that spray of holly nestling in gives the right festive touch. The mantel looks lovely, too, with that bank of holly and laurel. Why, Lance laid the fire in the fireplace, didn’t he? I don’t see when he had time.”

“He did that while I was pouring his coffee,” the sister said with a laugh. “He didn’t intend to have anything weighing on his conscience to keep him back when he is ready to go to the village for Ruth Lattimer.”

The mother smiled indulgently. There was nothing troubling in the thought of Ruth. She was a dear girl whom they all knew and loved. It was going to be nice to have Ruth with them. But then the shadow crept into her eyes again as she hurried back to the kitchen to do her mixing.

The two flew around at their work in a pleasant silence until Daryl had the dishes marshaled into the kitchen and was making short work of them. The fat was beginning to sizzle in the kettle, the dough was lying in a soft, puffy mass on the molding board, and a bright cutter was forming it into rings ready for frying.

Daryl hung up her dish towel, carried the pile of plates and cups to the pantry, and came over to test a bit of the dough to see if the fat was hot enough for the frying.

The mother looked up and smiled, with that little pool of worry back in the depths of her brown eyes. She thought the smile covered the worry, but it hovered out in her voice, too, as she spoke.

“What time is Mr. Warner coming?” There was something formal in her voice, and the girl felt it and looked up.

“Why won’t you call him Harold, Mother? He wants you to. You don’t need to hold him at arm’s length that way.”

The mother flushed.

“Well, I can’t seem to get used to it. I’ve seen him so little,” she apologized quickly. “You know in my day people didn’t call each other by their first names until they were well acquainted. But what time is he coming? Will it be before lunch? I don’t think you told me.”

“Oh, no,” said the girl, “he has to stay in the office till noon, and then it’s quite a drive.”

“Driving, is he? I didn’t know he had a car.”

“No, he hasn’t, but the company is lending him one. At least he had one for his work, and he said they wouldn’t care if he used it on off days.”

There was a silence for a moment while the mother considered this.

“I wouldn’t think it would be wise to do that without asking,” she said, speaking her thoughts aloud, and then wishing she hadn’t. “Suppose something should happen to it while he had it out for pleasure.”

“Why, he’ll probably ask, of course,” said Daryl a bit loftily. Then after a brief tense silence: “You don’t like him, do you, Mother?” Her voice was brittle, reproachful, as if the edge of her joy had suddenly broken off.

“Why! I never said that, Daryl!” said the mother quickly, shocked at being suspected in her innermost soul. “Why child! What have I done that should make you think that? I don’t really know him well enough to be sure whether I like him or not. I’m sure I never suggested such a thing as that I didn’t like him.”

“No, but you don’t!” said Daryl, with tears in her voice. “I felt it the minute you first looked at him. I’ve felt it both times he was here. And I can’t understand it! Everybody likes him! Simply everybody! And he’s so good-looking!” Her voice was almost a sob.

“Yes, he’s good-looking,” admitted Mrs. Devereaux, “he’s very good-looking. Perhaps that’s the trouble. He’s almost too good-looking to be true!” She tried to turn it off with a laugh, for after all she mustn’t say anything she would have to live down, but her voice faltered, and the depths of trouble shone out clearly from her eyes.

“Now, Mother!” said Daryl in a vexed tone, her own eyes suddenly filling and making them look like great blue lakes. “You would find something to worry about in that. The very idea of you not liking Harold because he is too good-looking. How perfectly silly!”

“I know,” said the mother, turning her troubled gaze on her child again, “it wasn’t that, of course. It was just that I love you so, dear child, and I want to be sure your friends are—all right!”

“But why shouldn’t he be all right? What is there about him, Mother, that made you think he wasn’t?”

“Nothing!” said her mother, feeling the look of trouble and indignation in her girl’s eyes, “nothing whatever! I just felt as if he wasn’t—quite—our kind!”

“What do you mean, our kind?” flashed the girl, on the defensive at once.

“Well—I don’t know—” said Mrs. Devereaux. “I rather got the idea, I guess, from some things he said when he was talking with Father, that he was out in social life a lot, and that his business threw him among a rather fast lot of men. Daryl, he doesn’t drink, does he?”

The girl’s face flushed suddenly red, and a flash almost of fear went shivering through the blue of her eyes.

“Why no, of course not!” she said haughtily. “At least, I know he has taken it occasionally out at a dinner or somewhere that he thought he had to, but he doesn’t care for it at all, and he never accepts it when he is out with me!” she added proudly. “He just doesn’t order it. He says I’ve been very good for him, Mother! You needn’t be in the least afraid of anything like that. He understands perfectly how I feel about drinking, and he says it’s nothing to him at all, whether he drinks or whether he doesn’t drink! He says that he never wants to do anything to worry me.”

A misty look came into Daryl’s eyes as she remembered the look in the young man’s eyes when he had told her this.

The mother watched her, more fearful than ever, yet saw and understood that misty look, too, and felt for her child again.

“Dear Father in heaven! Grant that it may be so!”
her heart breathed.

“Oh, Mother! You are just spoiling this perfectly wonderful Christmastime!” Daryl suddenly said with a quiver of her young lips.

“There now, child! Put this all away!” the mother said quickly. “You got it all up out of whole cloth! And of course I’ll like him if he’s all right. And of course he’s all right or you wouldn’t like him. I’ll be very fond of him when I know him better. Don’t I always like your friends? And besides, why make such a fuss about it? You’re not engaged to him or anything, not yet anyway! You’re just friends!”

“Yes, of course,” said Daryl, relief beginning to overspread her face, “just friends!” But there was a twinkle in the corner of her mouth where a dimple lurked.

“But awfully good friends!” she added with the starry look coming back into her eyes.

“Yes, of course!” said the mother, suddenly drawing her girl into her arms and smothering a sigh in her sweet young neck as she kissed her cheek tenderly.

And just at that moment the fat got itself ready to boil over, and the experimental doughnut came to the top as black as a doughnut could possibly be. The ensuing rescue diverted the conversation for the time being, and when calm had been restored the two loving women dared not broach the subject again.

Daryl, at least, forgot it, and her joy bubbled over in song now and again as she sifted powdered sugar over the big platter of beautifully brown crisp doughnuts, while she cleaned the fine old family silver, and got out the best long tablecloth to look it over for possible breaks, counted out the napkins, and arranged everything in order in the sideboard so that the dinner tomorrow would be assembled with the least possible effort. And now and again she would drop into the living room for a minute to ripple out some notes on the piano, and trill a bit of a song, some favorite of her mother’s or a snatch of something she had learned out in the world. It was all one joyous Christmas medley of happiness, and the wonderful Christmas wasn’t spoiled after all.