The Flower Brides (48 page)

She went in a sudden panic to the ticket window and asked a few questions. She bought a return ticket to her home city. She went to the lunch counter in the station and swallowed a few bites, drank a cup of coffee, and was ready, standing with her bags at her feet beside the gateway, waiting for her train, fifteen minutes before the scheduled time for its arrival.

She might have been sitting, resting on one of the station benches, for she was deadly weary, but she was too restless to rest. She had to be there, ready to go out the moment the gates were open. So she stood, tense, braced, and looking with unseeing eyes around on the vast, dusky room with its coming and going throngs. Why had she come out here? How had she hoped to find haven even with an aunt? For now she saw clearly that if the aunt had been there as she had expected, and she had been obliged to stay several days to explain her presence there at all, it would have been torture. What she wanted was to be alone in some little quiet place where she could rest and think and try to straighten out what this life meant that she was called upon to live, this life that she had no right to lay down and yet that seemed to have no solution to its problems. She had to find that out before she could go on any further. Aunts and friends or even strangers could only hinder a process like this. She must be alone to think. She must find a solution to life in order to endure it. She had always had someone to lean upon—first her darling mother and then her loving father. But now she had neither, and she had, in addition, an enemy! That was the situation. She had to work it out alone,
alone
!

The delicacy of her face, the rippling of her hair, the deep appeal of her eyes made her a noticeable figure as she stood there alone by the train gateway, surrounded by her luggage. More than one weary traveler waiting for a belated train or a wandering member of his household watched her idly as one would gaze upon a flower garden in the rain. But her eyes roved over them all restlessly, not seeing them at all.

She did not know that there were heavy lines graven in her soft face where only yesterday it was smooth and fine. She did not know that her eyes were full of anguish that anyone might read. She thought herself a quiet, patient figure, unobtrusively waiting for a train, and when she saw a slender figure rise from the bench across the room and come toward her she noticed her no more than if she had been the station janitor going around with his broom and long-handled pan to gather up the papers and the match ends.

But then the other girl paused beside her shyly, sweetly, with such a friendly look in her plain gray eyes, and spoke half hesitantly.

“I brought you this,” said the other girl. “I’ve been reading it, and I thought perhaps it would rest you to read it, too. I could see something has hurt you. I’m sorry. I understood because I’ve been hurt, too. But I found something that will heal the hurt, and you will, too, if you’ll read this and believe it.”

She handed out a tiny printed tract, just two miniature pages. There was a look in her eyes that could not anger anyone no matter how proud.

Diana brought startled eyes down to the bit of paper the other girl held out, and a shade of the Disston pride stiffened her features. Then she turned her glance to the girl who offered it, saw the gentleness in the girl’s face, and her own eyes softened.

The stranger was plainly dressed, even poorly, in the cheapest kind of garments, with a little hat that might have come from a bargain counter in the ten-cent store, and her hands were cased in cheap, ill-fitting cotton gloves; that is, one was, though the other was bare, showing that though delicately formed it was rough and hardened with work. Her shoes were shabby, and her dress of common dark cotton, ill-cut and not at all attractive. Yet there shone in the girl’s face a light and joy that made her noticeable anywhere, and looking into her clear, sweet eyes, Diana could not help but trust her.

She put out her hand to take the little paper offered, and as she did so the other girl’s face lit with a joy inexpressible, as if it gave her real pleasure to have the stranger accept her gift.

“What is it?” Diana asked wonderingly, looking at the paper and then up at the girl.

“It’s something wonderful. I can’t stay to explain. My train’s called, and I have to hurry, but you read it. You trust it! It helped me, and I know it’ll help you. Good-bye!” The girl started away but, pausing, turned back and said in a low, sweet voice, “I’ll be praying that you’ll get what I got!”

Then she was gone.

Diana watched her threading her way swiftly through the throngs, hurrying through the gate, her newspaper bundle gripped in one arm, her ticket in the other hand. One bright look she cast back and then was gone. Diana stood wondering, the little paper trembling in her hand, her thoughts utterly turned away from herself for the first time that day. This was a poor girl, hard-working, thin, and not well-fed apparently. There was a look in her eyes of suffering endured, and yet how they lit up with real joy! There was even a sparkle in her voice! Diana stood, wondering, staring at the gate where the girl had disappeared until suddenly a trainman came up and slammed open the steel gate that led to her own train and called it out, reaching out his punch to her ticket, and Diana was roused to her own situation again.

She followed the porter down the steps to the train and up into the car then down the aisle to her compartment in a sort of daze, still holding in her hand the tiny fluttering paper, gripping it as if it were something precious. And when she had paid the porter and settled down in her seat with a weary sigh of relief, she sat still holding that bit of paper, staring out the window and thinking about the look in that other girl’s face.

It was not until the train was finally moving that she turned her eyes to the paper and began to read with deepening interest.

In large letters it stood out as the title to the tiny message. Startled, she read on, as if it had been written by someone she knew and sent to her as a special message in her need. It would not have been any more startling if a telegraph boy had come through the train and handed it to her, and she had found Maggie’s or her mother’s name attached to it.

That was all that was on that little front page, standing out clearly from the paper in large type, as if a voice were speaking it to her soul. Diana was almost afraid to turn the tiny page lest the spell would be broken and she would find it merely the advertisement of some trickster, some beauty parlor, or new product. Then her mind became impatient, and she turned the leaf tremblingly, so much she wanted it to be some real help for her need.

Diana read that over twice, wondering if that could really be true and how the writer knew that. This, then, was religion, and she had been brought up to respect religion, although it had never meant anything practical to her. But these were arresting sentences, and her need was very great. Her soul seemed to be clutching for the bit of a message and seeking to draw the truth from its pages. She read on.

Oh! Was that true? How had that been? Had God really turned His back on Christ? And why? There were two references below in tiny type. Diana wished she had a Bible that she might look them up. Perhaps the references would explain the statement. But how wonderful that her very situation should be described! For her father had in reality turned his back on her. She remembered that gesture of impatience when she had flung her arms around him and cried on his shoulder. How he had pushed her away and gone and stood by the mantel with his back half turned away.

The tears sprang into her eyes unbidden, and she had to dash them away before she could go on reading. It seemed to her nothing short of miraculous that this little message should have fallen into her hands tonight, of all nights, when she so much needed it, this message that exactly fitted and understood her heart’s cry.

There were more references here, and then the last little page went on in big letters again:

Then more small lines of references again. That was all. How she wished again for a Bible! She had not brought hers with her. It had never been a vital part of her life. It had not occurred to her to take it with her in her suitcase, and she could not even remember if she had packed it with the other books that were in storage. She was not sure when she had seen it last. Well, no matter, it was just a small fine-print copy, anyway, and she could surely get one anywhere. Didn’t they have them in hotel rooms? It seemed to her that she remembered having seen one there the last time she and her father took a trip together. Well, when she got somewhere she would get a Bible and look up the references and see if there was really anything in it to give her comfort. She could not afford to pass by any chance, no matter how frail, of finding something to ease her pain.

She read the little tract over again slowly, before she prepared for the night. As she lay down she had a vision of that stranger girl in the station, her bright, earnest face and the words she had called back in leaving. She had promised to pray for her! What a strange thing for a stranger to do. And yet, if it were all true, perhaps that was the way the children of God ought to do with one another. Another time such interference by an utter stranger would have roused her scorn, would have repelled her. But now her heart felt strangely warmed toward another human creature who had suffered herself and therefore had rightly read her own suffering.

Finally she closed her eyes and tried to think of God as looking down on her and caring what became of her and how this matter of her life turned out.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, softly like a prayer, “if You really know and care, won’t You show me how to find You, for I need You very greatly.”

She fell asleep at last with the little paper held tightly in her hand.

A
bout that same time Gordon MacCarroll arrived home at the cottage, put away his little car for the night, and came in to get the belated supper that his mother was keeping warm and delicious for him.

“Soup!” he said, giving a pleased sniff at the atmosphere as he entered. “Good old beef soup and plenty of potatoes and dumplings. There’s nothing better than that.”

“Yes,” said his mother, with a pleased smile, “it’s best when you don’t know how long you have to wait to serve it. It always keeps well. Now, sit down right away. I know you must be starved.”

“Well, all but—” said the son. “And say, I’m tired tonight! I had a lot of difficulty finding my location today and difficulty with that man after I found him, but I won out and got my contract signed, so it doesn’t matter,” he said as he passed his plate.

“That’s good! Tell me all about it,” said the mother with satisfaction, watching the light of content play over her boy’s face.

So while they dallied restfully with the soup, and more soup, they talked about Gordon’s business, he telling little details of the day, describing the scenery along the way he had driven, the people he had met. Gordon was a great mimic, and his mother was a good audience. She enjoyed to the full every bit of character sketch he gave and followed his delight in the woods and trees and sky effects. They were good company for one another, these two.

It was not until the delicious apple pie, delicate of crust and transparent with dripping jellied fruit, was brought in with its accompanying velvety cheese that Mrs. MacCarroll remembered.

“Oh,” she said suddenly, “I’ve news for you about the big house. I had a caller today!”

“A caller?” said Gordon, his eyes lighting. “Someone from the village?”

“No, no one from the village yet, Son; what could you expect? We haven’t been in the cottage a month yet and people haven’t discovered us. Besides, we’ve been traveling around from one church to another on Sundays trying to find out where we belong, so people don’t know where to place us yet. Another thing, too, we’re among big estates, and we’re neither one nor the other. We’re not servants nor mansion owners, and how would anybody call on us yet till they know us?”

“Well, I don’t care, Mother, only for your sake. I know you miss the hosts of friends you left in Edinburgh.”

“That’s all right, Gordon. I miss them, of course, but real friends like the friends of a lifetime aren’t made in a day. Don’t be in such a rush. I’m content.”

“You’re wonderful, little mother,” said the son with a tender light in his eyes. “You wouldn’t complain if you didn’t have any friends, I know. But I do want you to have a few right away so you won’t be lonely when I have to be away. But I interrupted you. Who was your caller? You don’t mean to tell me it was the little lady?”

“No,” the mother said, smiling and shaking her head with a flitting of sadness in her eyes. “I wish it had been. No, it was only the servant woman, Maggie, as she said I was to call her. She came to bring me the recipe for that pudding she promised the other day and to bid me good-bye. She’s gone.”

“You mean the whole family is moving away?” asked Gordon, with dismay in his face. “They haven’t sold the house, have they?”

“No,” said his mother, with a look of having more news. “No, but the woman, Maggie, is leaving. It seems there have been great doings up at our estate, and Maggie can’t stand them. The master has married again and neither the daughter nor the servant like the new mistress, and they have both left, so we won’t see our little lady anymore. Isn’t that a pity? That must have been what she was crying about when she went by.”