CHAPTER VI
PHIL WALKS IN
Meanwhile, Phil Tremont, on the outer edge of the big audience, lookedin vain for Mary or for some one answering to the description she hadgiven of Mrs. Blythe. Several times he shifted his seat, slippingfarther around towards the stage. In one of the brief intervals betweenspeeches, while the orchestra played, he questioned an usher, and foundthat Mrs. Blythe had not yet arrived, and that when she came she wouldprobably wait in one of the wings until time to be introduced to theaudience.
With an impatient glance at his watch he changed his seat once more,this time to one in the section nearest the stage, but still in a backrow. He wanted to make sure of seeing Mary before she could see him. Hedecided that if she did not make her appearance by the time Mrs. Blythearrived he would go back behind the scenes and look for her. Maybe Mrs.Blythe would station her there somewhere as prompter, for fear that shemight forget her speech. If that were the case it would be a pity todistract the prompter's attention, but it was a greater pity that thefew hours he had to spend with her should be wasted in idle waiting.
Several people who had glanced up admiringly at the handsome strangerwhen he took his seat, watched with interest his growing impatience. Itwas evident that he was anxiously waiting for some one, from the way healternately scanned the entrance, looked at his watch and referred tothe programme. When Mrs. Blythe's name on it was reached he leanedforward, clutching the back of the chair in front of him impatientlytill the chairman came to the front of the stage.
The next instant such an audible exclamation of surprise broke from himthat several rows of heads were turned inquiringly in his direction. Hefelt his face burn, partly from having attracted so much attention tohimself, partly from the surprise of the moment. For following thechairman came not the dainty little Mrs. Blythe in her love of a newgown and the big plumed hat, but Mary herself. There was such a poundingin Phil's ears that he scarcely heard the chairman's explanation of Mrs.Blythe's absence, and his announcement that Miss Ware had brought amessage from her to which they would now listen.
Several curious emotions possessed him in turn, after his firstoverwhelming surprise. One was a little twinge of resentment at herspeaking in public. Not that he was opposed to other women doing it, butsomehow he wished that she hadn't attempted it. Then he felt the anxietyand sense of personal responsibility one always has when a member ofone's own family is in the limelight. No matter how competent he may beto rise to the occasion, there is always the lurking dread that he mayfail to acquit himself creditably.
Phil had been thinking of Mary as he saw her that last morning in Bauer,all a-giggle and a-dimple and aglow, romping around the kitchen withNorman, till the tinware clattered on the walls. But it was a verydifferent Mary who faced him now, with the old newspaper in her hand andthe story of Dena's wrongs burning to be told on her lips. It is proofof how well she told it that her opening sentence brought a hush overthe great audience and held it in absolute silence to the end. And yetshe told it so simply, so personally, that it was as if she had merelyopened a door into Diamond Row and bidden them see for themselves thewindowless rooms, the mouldy walls, the slimy yards, Elsie Whayne andDena, and the old grandmother fondling the sunny curls of littleTerence.
When she finished, old Judge Brown was wiping his eyes, and portlyDoctor Haverhill was adding to the general din of applause by poundingon the floor with his gold-headed cane. The chairman rose to announcethe last speaker on the programme, but Phil did not wait for anythingmore. He had seen Mary pick up the coat which she had left hanging onthe chair behind the palms, and leave the platform. At the same timeSandford Berry started up from his place at the reporters' table andhurried after her.
Immediately Phil slipped from his seat and dashed down the aisle alongthe side wall, to the door leading into one of the wings. Not familiarwith the back exits, he stumbled into several wrong passages before hefound some one to start him in the right direction. Despite his haste,when he reached the street, Mrs. Blythe's automobile was just whirlingaway from the curbstone, and Sandford Berry was coming back from puttingMary into it. He had the newspaper in his hand which she had broughtfrom Diamond Row. It was for that he had hurried after her, promisingto use it to good advantage and return it to her in the morning. She hadrefused at first, remembering old Mrs. Donegan's caution not to let itout of her hands, and it was that brief parley which held her longenough for Phil to reach the street and catch a fleeting glimpse of her.
He looked around for a taxicab or a carriage, but there was none insight. A policeman on the next corner directed him to a trolley car, andtold him where to transfer in order to reach Dudley Blythe's residence.As he swung up on to the platform of the car he looked at his watchagain. It was half-past four o'clock. It was past five when he reachedthe house. A tie-up of cars on the track ahead was accountable for thedelay.
Mary, in the machine and by a more direct route, had reached home nearlyhalf an hour before. She found a trained nurse in attendance on Mr.Blythe. He had regained consciousness and, though still unable to speak,was so much better that they were sure of his ultimate recovery. Mrs.Blythe came out into the hall to tell her the good news.
"There's no need to ask you how _you_ got through," she exclaimed,slipping an arm around her in an impulsive embrace.
"I know you did splendidly, and I'll be in your room in a few minutes tohear all about it. Now, run along and lie down awhile. You look so whiteand tired--no wonder, after all you've been through to-day."
If Mary had been at the boarding-house she would have thrown herselfdown on the bed and gone without her supper. She felt so exhausted andcollapsed. But under the circumstances she felt that the obligations ofa guest required her to keep going. The evening meal was always somewhatof a formal affair here, but she decided not to dress for it as usual.Mr. Blythe's illness would change everything in that regard. She was sotired she would just bathe her face and brush her hair while she stillhad energy enough to move, and then would stretch out in the biglounging chair in the firelight, and be ready for Mrs. Blythe any timeshe might happen to come in. It took only a few moments to do all this,and just as she finished, Mrs. Blythe came in with a cup of hot tea.
"Drink it and don't say a word until you have finished," she ordered.
Mary obeyed the first part, sipping the tea slowly as she lay backluxuriously in the big chair, but she couldn't help commenting on thestrange, strange day that had brought so many unexpected things topass.
"Isn't it a blessed good thing," she exclaimed, "that we can't know whenwe get up in the morning all that the day has in store for us? You'dhave been nearly crazy if you'd known all day that Mr. Blythe was goingto have that stroke of paralysis, and I'd simply have gone up in the airif I had dreamed that I had to take your place on the programme. Nothingcould have happened that would have surprised me more."
But even while she spoke a still greater surprise was in store for her.Both had heard the doorbell ring a moment before, but neither had paidany attention to it. Now the maid came in with a message for Mary.
"A gentleman in the library to see you, Miss Ware. He wouldn't give hisname. He just said to tell you that he was an old friend passing throughtown, and that he couldn't go till he had seen you."
"Who can it be?" exclaimed Mary, pulling herself slowly up from thesleepy hollow chair, much puzzled. "If it's an old friend, it must besome one from Lloydsboro Valley. Everybody else is too far away to dropin like that. But why didn't he send up his card, I wonder?"
"Probably because he wants to surprise you," answered Mrs. Blythe. "Ifit's any one you'd care to invite to dinner, feel perfectly free to doso."
With a word of thanks and a hasty peep into the mirror, Mary starteddown stairs, wondering at every step whom she would find. Time had beenwhen she would have pictured an imaginary suitor waiting for her below,for it had been one of her pastimes when she was a child to manufacturesuch mythical personages by the score. What they were like depended onwhat she had jus
t been reading. If fairy-tales, then it was ablond-haired prince who came to her on bended knee to kiss her hand andbeg her to fly with him upon his coal-black steed to his castle. If shehad been dipping into some forbidden novel like _Lady Agatha's Career_,then the fond suppliant was a haughty duke whom she spurned at first,but graciously accepted afterward. Through many a day-dream, slenderlads and swarthy knights in armor, dauntless Sir Galahads and wicked St.Elmos had sued for her favor in turn, with long and fervent speeches.She did not know that there was any other way. And it had always been inmoon-lighted gardens that these imaginary scenes took place, withnightingales singing in rose vines and jessamine arbors.
She had quit dreaming of such things since she came to Riverville.Romance had little place in the hard, sad world with which her workbrought her in contact. So no such fancies passed through her mind nowas she went down the stairs; nothing but a keen curiosity to know whichof her old friends it was who waited below.
Dusk had fallen early that gray November evening, but the library wasaglow with the cheerful light of an open fire. Some one stood before it,gazing down into the dancing flames, a tall, familiar figure,broad-shouldered and erect. There was no mistaking who it was waitingthere in the gloaming. Only one person in all the world had that lordlyturn of the head, that alert, masterful air, and Mary acknowledged toherself with a disquieting throb of the pulses that he was the oneperson in the world whom of all others she wished most to see.
"Oh, Phil!" she cried happily from the doorway.
He had not heard her coming down the stairs and along the hall, sosoftly was it carpeted, but at the call he turned and came to meet her,both hands out, his handsome face suddenly radiant, as if the sight ofher brought unspeakable pleasure. Not a word did he say as he reachedout and took her hands in his and looked down into her upturned face.But his eyes spoke. Their very smile was a caress, and the strong, warmhands clasping hers closed over them as if they had just found somethingthat belonged to them and were taking undisputed possession.
There was no need for him to tell her all that he had come to say. Shefelt it throbbing through the silence that was as solemn as a sacrament.Their eyes looked into each other's searchingly. Then, as if from thebeginning of time they had been moving towards this meeting, heannounced simply, "I've come for you, dear. I'm starting on a new trailnow, and I can't go without you."
If that first hour of their betrothal had little need of words, therewas call for much speech and many explanations before he bade her goodnight. Mary learned first, to her unbounded amazement, how near he hadcome to asking her to marry him more than two years before, when heparted from her in Bauer.
"But you were not more than half-way grown up then," he said. "Irealized it when I saw you romping around with Norman. I couldn't sayanything then because it didn't seem fair to you. But I had to bind youin some way. That's why I made you promise what you did about letting meknow if any other man ever crossed your trail. I wanted to claim youthen and there and make sure of you, for I've always felt in some way oranother we belonged to each other. I've felt that ever since I firstknew you, Little Vicar."
There flashed across Mary's mind the remembrance of a conversation shehad overheard on the porch at The Locusts one night, and of Phil's voicesinging to Lloyd, to the accompaniment of a guitar:
"Till the stars are old, And the sun grows cold, And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold."
But if the faintest spark of jealousy glowed in Mary's heart, it wasextinguished at once and forever by another recollection--a remark ofPhil's as they once waited on the side-track together, going up to Bauerafter the San Jacinto festival. It was just after she had confessed tothe unconscious eavesdropping that made her a hearer of that song.
"Yes," he said, "that time will always be one of the sweetest and mostsacred of my memories. One's earliest love always is, they say, like thefirst white violet in the spring. But--_there is always a summer afterevery spring, you know._"
Who cares for one little violet of a bygone spring when the prodigalwealth of a whole wonderful summertime is being poured out for one? Sowhen Phil said again musingly, "It does seem strange, how we've alwaysbelonged to each other, doesn't it?" Mary looked up with a twinklingsmile to say:
"How could it be otherwise with _Philip and Mary on a shilling_?" Andthen she showed him the old English shilling which she wore on herwatch-fob, the charm which she had drawn from Eugenia's wedding cake. ToPhil's unbounded amusement she told the story of dropping it into thecontribution plate that Christmas service, and getting lost in thestreets of New York in trying to rescue it from the bank where it hadbeen taken for deposit.