The Flower Brides

  “Oh, that was kind of you to go after him.”

  “Nothing kind about it,” said Ethan gruffly. “It’s my job, isn’t it, to look after my fellow men? Especially those that are under me in my work. I only wish I could reach deeper down than just the surface and get their feet fixed on solid rock where they can’t be moved. I’m always glad when that can be done!”

  She looked at him in surprise. This was a new view of this young man. A man as young as he to care what became of his workers!

  But before she could make any remark about it, he got up suddenly and started toward the stairs; then glancing at his watch, he turned back to her and said hesitantly, almost brusquely, “I suppose you wouldn’t—care—to go to church—with me, would you?” He lifted his eyes and looked straight into hers, almost piercingly. The question was like a challenge. She had a feeling that he expected her to make some excuse and get out of it, but she lifted her eyes with sudden resolve.

  “Why, yes,” she said gravely, “I would, very much. I was just wondering where to find a church.”

  He seemed almost surprised at her answer.

  “But I won’t be taking you to any grand church,” he said, again with a challenge in his glance.

  “What makes you think I want to go to a grand church?” she parried. “I’d like to go with you; that is, if I won’t be in your way.”

  Did his eyes light up at that, or did she imagine it? And why was there something like a little song in her heart as she ran upstairs to get her hat and coat?

  Chapter 8

  The church to which Ethan took Marigold that morning was a plain little structure, not even in the neighborhood of handsome buildings, but the sermon was one that she would never forget, for it seemed to be a message straight from God to her own soul. Afterward she couldn’t quite remember what the text or main theme of the sermon had been. It had only seemed to her as if God had been there and had been speaking directly to her.

  She was very quiet all the way home. Ethan did not seem to notice. He was silent, too, perhaps watching her furtively.

  Just as they came in sight of the house she spoke, thinking aloud. “I’m glad I heard that sermon. It made me think of things I had almost forgotten, things I can remember my father saying when I was a little girl and he was preaching.”

  “Was your father a minister?” asked Ethan in surprise. “I may have known it once, but I certainly had forgotten.”

  “Yes,” said Marigold, looking up with dreamy memory in her eyes. “He was wonderful, and he preached real things. I was only a child, but I remember a lot of them, and I needed to have them brought back to my memory.”

  He gave her another surprised look, mixed, she felt, with something like tenderness.

  At last, just before they reached the house, he said, “I’m very glad you felt that way. I’m always encouraged when I go to hear that man preach.” And as he helped her up the steps there seemed to be somehow a bond between them that had not been there before, a kind of new sympathy. Yet he said nothing more. Just looked at her and smiled as they entered the house together.

  In the afternoon they took Aunt Marian for another short drive because the day was fine and the ride to Mount Vernon had seemed to do her so much good. They wound up at a street meeting held by one of the missions in the lower part of the city. Marigold was greatly interested. She had never been to a street meeting before. She studied the faces of the young people who were conducting it, giving their simple testimonies, and reflected on the contrast between them and Laurie’s crowd. Yes, she had been getting afar off from the things her dear father would have wished for her, just as her mother had hinted. She was very thoughtful after that.

  They stopped for a few minutes at the breakfast mission for Ethan to see if everything was going to be all right for the worker to get back to camp that night, and then they went home and had a lovely buffet supper served in Aunt Marian’s room with Ethan for waiter. They all sat awhile afterward listening to Aunt Marian’s favorite preacher on the radio. By common consent they lingered with the dear invalid as long as she was allowed to stay awake, feeling that their time together was not to be long and wanting to please her as much as possible. The nurse was out, and the patient begged them to remain a little longer, saying she was not tired, but at last when they insisted that she ought to be asleep, she said, “All right. But first let’s have a bit of Bible reading and a prayer! Ethan, you get my Bible.”

  Marigold sat down again and watched Ethan in surprise as he quietly got the Bible and sat down to read. Imagine such a request being made of Laurie! How he would laugh and jeer if anybody thought of asking him to do such a thing. A pang of troubled doubt went through her soul with the thought. Had she been brought here to watch this most unusual man and see the contrast between him and Laurie? She pushed the thought away in annoyance.

  Ethan opened the Bible as if it were a familiar book. He didn’t ask his aunt where he should read. He turned directly to the ninety-first psalm and read in a clear voice, as if he loved what he was reading: “‘He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust….’”

  Somehow as he read on, Marigold felt as if he were reading the words just for her. As if in his mind, they had some special significance for her. She sat there listening, thrilled with the thought.

  “‘Surely he shall deliver thee—’”

  Was he trying to remind her that when earthly friends were not by to help she was not alone?

  “‘Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night—’”

  And now he did lift his eyes and look straight into hers, with a light in them that surely he meant her to read and understand. He was thinking of the dream she had told him and the terror that possessed her sometimes when she woke in the night. It could not have been plainer if he had said it in his own words, and suddenly she blushed in response. Yet it was all unobserved by the two dear women who were sitting by listening, though they would dearly have loved to have caught that look that passed between the two beloved children.

  And the steady voice went on: “‘…he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee—’” It was like a benediction, and Marigold felt she never could forget it as his voice read on to the end of the psalm.

  And then he knelt and prayed, such a simple, earnest petition, filled with deep thanksgiving, humble confession, heartfelt trust, and joyful praise. And this was the young man she had scorned when she came. The man she wished anywhere else but where she was to be!

  She looked at him with a kind of shy awe and mingled humility as they rose from their knees, and he smiled at her again as if she were suddenly one of his closest friends. She couldn’t quite understand what made the difference in his attitude, but she knew it was there and it gave her a warm feeling around her heart. That was something more than just happiness. It seemed almost as if it were something like a holy bond.

  She went to sleep that night wondering about it and not realizing that she hadn’t once remembered the party or Laurie all day long. It seemed as if somehow she was entering a new era in her life. She didn’t question what it was to be, but she knew that she could never go back home and be the same thoughtless butterfly that she had been before. She found herself wishing wistfully that she might be with the wonderful young man and learn the secret of his sweetness and his strength. She hoped—and this was her last waking thought—that in the morning he would not again slam the door of his soul, leaving her outside. Not until she could ask him a few questions and perhaps get nearer to his Source of strength, anyway.

  She hurried eagerly downstairs early the next morning, but he was gone. Gone without a word!

  “Ethan was sorry he had to leave without farewells,” said Aunt Marian to Marigold’s mother, calling from her room as Mrs. Brooke went by her door. “Someone called him last night about a man, one of his workers, and he had to
go and hunt him up. Some poor soul for whom he feels responsible. He slipped out without waking anybody. He called me just now on the phone and asked me to say how sorry he was not to be able to say good-bye. He had not intended to leave until after breakfast and was hoping to get another word with you both before he left.”

  Marigold, at the foot of the stairs, heard, and her heart went down with a thud of disappointment, the light out of her eyes and the brightness out of the new bright day! So! That was that! She would probably never see him again and their brief meeting would pass into the “had been” and be forgotten!

  She stared blankly around her wondering what she would do with the day. Of course, she could call up Mrs. Waterman now and find out if Laurie had called, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter much whether he had or not.

  Then she heard her mother’s footsteps coming down the stairs, and she roused to a cheerfulness that she was far from feeling. What was the matter with her, anyway? Silly thing! What difference did it make whether Ethan Bevan was there or away? He was nothing whatever to her. Two days ago she would have been glad enough to get rid of him. She ought to be glad that he went away with a pleasant smile and she didn’t have to remember him as a grouch before whom she had been humiliated. He had been nice to her in the end. And he was a good man. He had helped her. She must be honest about that. And it was just sheer foolishness for her to be disappointed that he had gone without giving her a special word. What was she to him? What could she expect? She was nothing but one of his fellow mortals upon this earth who needed help. She was no more to him than that poor worker who had called him from his sleep to search him out and save him. She was just a weak sister who couldn’t bear to stand somewhere high and look down, and he had carried her down and given her his strength, for the time being, to help tide her over her dismay. She firmly believed that he had given her permanent help against that obsession, and she ought to be thankful that God had given her this brief contact with one so strong and so able to help others. And now she had to go back and meet her own world alone.

  But God had seen that she needed help and had sent her here to get it. He had seen that she needed to be awakened to the fact that she was getting away from the things of her childhood’s faith, the standards and customs that had been so safe and wise, and He had taken this way to show her where she was drifting. Now it was up to her to use her new knowledge. Or was it? Wasn’t she just as helpless alone, as if she were still standing out on that narrow ledge above the great height of peril? She couldn’t get back alone, could she? She needed someone’s strength to steady her until her feet were on solid ground. Some One, Ethan had said! How she wished she had asked him more about that experience of his own, in some of those silences yesterday. Now, probably, she would never know. But he had, at least in his reading of the psalm last night, given her a hint of where her strength was to be found. That was it. God would be her strength! She had to find out by herself how to get back to God and the things she had been forgetting so long.

  “Well,” said her mother suddenly, watching her intently, “what are you going to do today, dear? You have your freedom now to go about alone as you wished. What is going to be your plan?”

  Marigold looked up with sudden illumination and laughed. “Oh, Mother! I’m sorry I was so unspeakably disagreeable the night we arrived. I ought to have been spanked. He was lovely. He really was wonderful, and I enjoyed all the places he took me and had a very good time. I don’t know about today. Isn’t there something I could do to make a happy time for you and Aunt Marian? It seems to me I’ve had enough enjoyment to last me a good long while.”

  “Well, that’s sweet of you, dear, but I don’t see what you could do for us, this morning at least. We haven’t any car, and you couldn’t carry your aunt downstairs. Whatever we do for her will have to be done in her room until Elinor and her husband get home, since she can’t get downstairs.”

  “I could do jigsaw puzzles with her,” said Marigold brightly. “I heard her say she loves them, and you know I always did like to do them.”

  “Yes, well, perhaps you could part of the day, toward evening. But I’m sure she won’t be happy to have you cooped up all the time this lovely day. I think she would like it better if you went out somewhere awhile. She was speaking of some of the places around here she wanted you to see, to which you could walk easily. I think it would be nice if you were to go out a little while this morning, and perhaps again in the afternoon for a few minutes, and then come in and entertain her betweentimes with what you have seen.”

  “All right, I’ll go out for a walk. I’ll bring her back a new puzzle she hasn’t seen, and we’ll do that some of the in-betweens. But how about yourself? You’ve been cooped up most of the time. Why shouldn’t you go out, too, or let me stay here and you go alone?”

  Mrs. Brooke smiled. “You know, my dear, the best thing I can do is stay with my dear sister. We’ve been hungry for each other for many long years. But I’ll go out with you a few minutes for a walk if you would like it. Aunt Marian was telling me about a lovely place she wants me to see, and she says it’s only a few blocks from here. She says it reminds her so much of our old home when we were children. I’ll walk with you there now, right after breakfast, if you’d like, and then you can be free until lunchtime to go your own way.”

  So they went out together, and Mrs. Brooke studied her dear child’s face, wondering if the wistful look in her eyes was for Laurie and the party she had missed.

  But Marigold never mentioned the party or Laurie, either, and talked brightly of having her mother stay another two weeks after she herself went home. Talked blithely of little changes she meant to make in the apartment when they got back, new curtains they might have, to make things more cheery, and so they walked the lovely streets and came back to the house. Then Marigold started out on her lonely tour. But somehow there wasn’t a great deal of spice in this independence after all. Where should she go?

  Well, there was the art gallery. Ethan had said that was worth taking time to study. She would do that this morning. And then in the afternoon she would go awhile to the Smithsonian. If she ever should see Ethan again and he should ask her, which, of course, he wouldn’t because he asked very few questions, she would hate to say she hadn’t done anything with her precious time in Washington after he left.

  So she spent the morning in the Corcoran and came back impressed with the fact that she knew very little indeed about pictures, and only a few of the great ones she had seen that morning had meant very much to her. As she entered the house, the thought did come to her that perhaps that was because her mind had been more or less on other things all the time.

  She had stopped at a store long enough to purchase a fascinating jigsaw puzzle, and she and Aunt Marian worked at it until her aunt hurried her off to the Smithsonian, telling her that she would find the time all too short until four o’clock when everything belonging to the government closed.

  So she started out again, wandering here and there, getting a glimpse of this and that, and wondering what Ethan would have said if he had been here with her.

  And there she was again thinking about Ethan. How utterly ridiculous! Why not think about Laurie? How nice it would be if Laurie were like Ethan, that is, like him in some things, anyway. For instance, Laurie wouldn’t have stopped a minute to look at pictures or listen to classical music. He would have said it was too slow for him. He would have wanted something exciting. He never stopped to look into the history or the beauty or the reason of things. And Laurie, if she were frightened—well, Laurie in her dream had turned and waved his hand at her and then gone off laughing. It was so characteristic of his carefree nature that she couldn’t quite think of his carrying her comfortingly down those stairs and wiping her tears away. Laurie hated tears. He wanted smiles and laughter and excitement. Laurie would never have read the Bible and prayed, nor gone to church! Oh, if she started out on this new life she was vaguely planning, would she have to give up Lauri
e? Or be continually at swords’ points with him?

  She began almost to dread going home. What was she going to meet when she got there? What would this strange new kind of young man she had been companioning with the last two days do if he were put into her situation?

  One thing she knew, he would never give in and go the way of the world. There was something about him that showed he had distinctly given up the world as far as amusing himself was concerned. He didn’t go to nightclubs, nor admire girls who went to them. He hadn’t said so, but somehow she knew. And by the same token, she was sure he would never compromise with anything he had decided was not right.

  She walked herself around and took in the main points of the great museum. Then she took a taxi back to her aunt’s house, without ever really putting her mind on what she was seeing. In a vague way she recalled this and that, enough to mention a few things when she got back to the two who watched her and hoped she had had a good time, but all the time there had been that undertone of thought, gradually focusing in her mind into one overwhelming wish—that she might have one more chance to talk to Ethan Bevan and ask him a few of the questions that filled her with consternation as she contemplated meeting them all alone when she got home.

  The idea followed her all day, grew deeper while she worked on the puzzle with her aunt and in the evening while she sat in the lovely library and tried to read a book with only half her mind while the other half turned over her problems. It stayed with her and kept her awake after she had gone to bed and met her at the break of day when she awoke. This was her last morning here. Today she must go home. If she could only talk with that young man a half hour before she went away and ask him to advise her!