Gordon put his arms around her gently and drew her head to his shoulder.
“I know, little girl,” he said, “but you can’t tell what may have happened between her soul and God at the last minute, even in the twinkling of an eye. It does not take time to believe on Jesus Christ. I know it seems a terrible mystery, but we can safely trust our God to do right. You have seen your wrong and confessed it, now believe that it is forgiven and put away.”
“Oh, do you think so?” she said, turning eager, longing eyes on her beloved. “Oh, I hope she is saved. I used to hate her, but now I hope she is saved. Since I have learned that Jesus loved everybody enough to die for them I can love her, too. And I don’t want her to be lost!”
Two days later was Diana’s twenty-first birthday.
Gordon and Diana went together to Stephen Disston’s room to tell him of their love for each other.
Mr. Disston was feeling decidedly better. The nurse had a surprise for them. Mr. Disston was sitting up in a chair beside the little bedside table, clothed in dressing gown and slippers, and smilingly ready to receive them.
And when Gordon had told him, Stephen Disston looked at them both lovingly and said, “There isn’t a man in the world I know or have ever seen that I would as soon trust my girl with as you, Gordon MacCarroll. And it is not only that I trust you, I love you myself, for you have been like a son to me in my deepest trouble. And if it had not been for you perhaps I should never have had my little girl back again. I can truly receive you as my beloved son, and no ‘in-law’ about it.”
Diana’s eyes were starrier than ever as she looked toward her Gordon and touched to her lips a white rose bud, one of a new flock that he had brought her that morning for a birthday token.
They stayed on in sweet converse for an hour, and then as the nurse was heard to approach and Mr. Disston knew it was time for his morning rest he reached out his hand to a folded paper that lay on the table and handed it to Diana.
“Here, Diana, is a birthday gift from your own mother. She planned before she left us that you should be given this house with a sufficient fortune to keep it up and give you a good income all your life, on your twenty-first birthday.”
Diana’s cheeks grew pink with bewilderment and joy. “Oh, Father! But I thought this house was yours.”
“No, Diana! It never has been. Your mother’s mother gave it to her as a wedding gift with the understanding that it was to be an ancestral home and passed to your children after your death.”
Diana looked toward Gordon with sparkling eyes but was surprised to see a new gravity upon him.
“I did not know that I had presumed to ask the hand of an heiress,” he said with troubled voice. “I thought you told me that you were bankrupt, Mr. Disston.”
“And so I did,” said Diana’s father, with a sad little smile. “And so I was—although my lawyer told me yesterday that things are coming out better than we had feared and that it will not be as bad as that. I can pay all my debts and have a small income for myself. But this should make no difference to you, Gordon. Money should not enter into the scheme of things when two people love one another. It’s only something for which to be thankful when God chooses to send more than you asked.”
Then Diana lifted her head proudly. “Gordon, have you forgotten that you saved my life? Isn’t that more than money? Don’t I owe you all I have? Please don’t feel that this house and money could put even a faintest cloud between us two.”
She lifted her sweet eyes to his pleadingly, and he stooped and kissed her reverently.
“I won’t, sweetheart. Only—well, I’m glad I didn’t know it till afterward,” he said with a merry twinkle.
Half an hour later as they came out from the sickroom where the nurse was bustling about with reprimand in her countenance, to hurry her patient back to bed for a rest, Gordon said, “What about your room over in that terrible place where I found you, dear? Oughtn’t you to do something about that? You said you had some furniture there.”
“Yes,” said Diana, “I have some of my most precious possessions over there, my mother’s picture for one, and I know Father would want that back in his room. I telephoned Mrs. Lundy last night that I would be over tomorrow to pay her and see about taking my things away. I telephoned the movers, too.”
“Well, I’ll fix it up to go with you. I think if I do a few things this afternoon while you are resting I can get off tomorrow and stay till you come away.”
“Oh, you don’t need to do that, Gordon,” protested Diana. “I shan’t have to do much. The movers are perfectly capable, and, you know, it isn’t as if I didn’t know my way around there,” she laughed.
“That’s all right, sweetheart; you may know your way around, but I’m not trusting you alone in that terrible neighborhood again. God has put the responsibility on me now, and I intend to care for you to the best of my ability. And how about taking Mrs. Lundy a box of bright flowers to go in her plush parlor just by way of farewell?”
“Lovely,” said Diana, twinkling. “But they will have to be bright flowers, not spirit-flowers. The spirit-flowers are mine. My dear mystery flowers!”
White Orchids
Chapter 1
1930s
The light flashed red, and Camilla jammed on her brakes. The shabby little roadster came to a frightened, screeching stop just as a large truck came smashing down the crossroad, full power, striking the little car with a mighty impact, neatly removing a wheel and sending the car spinning straight into the air in a series of somersaults. It landed in the opposite ditch with crumpled fenders, broken bumpers, a twisted axle, and a fatal injury to its internal organs.
Behind the roadster a big shining car had stopped just in time, and a good-looking young man in evening dress and a rich fur-trimmed overcoat stepped out into the road and came over to see the wreck. He was tall, with a nice face, a firm mouth, and pleasant eyes. Just now they were filled with concern as he peered across the ditch into the darkness where the shabby little broken car lay upside down.
The driver of the truck lay across the road with a broken leg, only partly sobered.
Camilla lay huddled inside the little broken roadster, stunned from the shock, unable for the moment to cope with the happening.
“Anybody hurt?” asked the young man from the sedan in a voice that matched his fine face. The traffic cop was approaching excitedly from across the road.
“They sure oughtta be!” said the officer. “Truck driver is drunk as a fish, don’t know what it’s all about! Fool girl driving a junker! She tried to pass my light, didya see her? They all do. Girls think they can get by with anything!”
“But she stopped the instant the light went red. I was right behind her, and I saw. Didn’t you see her? Didn’t you hear her brakes?”
“Oh yeah? Sure! I heard! I hear everything! All the same, she was tryin’ ta get by, an’ now she’s probably done for herself! Well, it happens every day, an’ I gotta get her outta here. Traffic gettin’ all balled up!”
He turned his flashlight onto the dark little crumpled car, and the young man caught a glimpse of a white face and a huddled slender form.
The door was jammed shut, and it was some seconds before their united efforts got it open. The stalwart policeman lifted out the girl with strong, accustomed movements. These things happen every day! Just another fool girl! He poised her on his arm and looked around for a place to lay her until the ambulance came.
“Put her in the backseat of my car!” said the young man graciously. “It’s too cold and wet to lay her down by the roadside.”
There was a genuineness about him that even the hurried traffic cop respected, and that in spite of the gardenia in his lapel.
“Aw right!” said the officer, with an eye already across the road, dealing with the drunken driver. He turned and took a step toward the big, beautiful car.
It was then Camilla opened her eyes and came to an understanding of things. Her eyes were large and dark, and her
hair, which had fallen down around her face, was like fine spun gold.
“I’m—all right!” she murmured breathlessly. “Put me down, please—! I’ll be all right! I can stand.”
She slid to her feet, steadying herself with her hand on the officer’s arm, and looked around her, dazed. She felt for her hat, which had fallen on the ground, and the young man from the sedan picked it up and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said, taking an uncertain step toward her car, blinking her eyes to discern its dark, unshapely outlines in the ditch.
She looked at it dazedly and swayed, almost falling. The young man put out a steadying arm.
“I’m all right,” she said again, straining her eyes toward her car. “If you’ll just please—help me to get my car back—on the road—” She gasped out the words, struggling desperately now to stop trembling.
“Can’t be done, lady!” said the policeman. “That car has traveled its last road! It ain’t nothin’ but a bunch o’ junk now!”
Camilla’s big troubled eyes looked in horror at the officer and then turned to the young man with an appeal in her young, frightened eyes that instantly enlisted his sympathy.
“Oh, but it’s got to go!” she said desperately. “I’ve got to get on. I’m in a great hurry!”
“So I saw, lady, afore you decided ta put on yer brakes. Yer brakes are no good, anyhow. Guess ya ain’t had yer car inspected yet, hev ya? Them brakes would never get by an inspector. Ef ya hadn’t a ben in such a hurry, ya mighta been goin’ on by this time instead o’ bein’ all but killed yerself, an’ yer car dead entirely.”
The officer eyed her coldly. Now that she wasn’t dead it was his business to rub in the lesson she was learning.
“But it must go!” said Camilla frantically. “Please try to set it up for me! This is an emergency! I think it will go! It—always does—!” she urged hopefully. “It’s old, but it always comes back again—and goes on!”
“Well, it won’t never do that again, lady!” said the officer dryly. “What’s yer name an’ address? I gotta have them before ya can go anywheres,” he added, getting out a pencil and notebook.
“Oh, but I must go!” added Camilla. “I can’t wait for anything! My mother is dying, and the doctor sent me to his office for some medicine that she needs at once!”
“Sorry, lady, but y’ll havta go some other way. That car won’t carry nobody nowhere! An’ I gotta have yer address ’fore I can let ya go.”
“But what shall I do? I must get that medicine!”
Camilla was trembling from head to foot now, her lips trembling, too, and tears of which she was wholly unaware were streaming down her cheeks.
The young man from the sedan stepped closer and took off his hat deferentially.
“I will take you wherever you need to go,” he said politely. “My car will travel as fast as any.”
Camilla lifted terrified eyes to his face; liked his clean-cut jaw and the lean, pleasant line of his cheek; gave a comprehensive glance at the expensive car behind her; glanced back into his eyes; and knew she could trust him.
“But—it is a long way—” she said with shaking voice. “It must be almost seven miles from here! And—I have to get back again right away to the city with the medicine!”
“That’s all right with me!” said the young man pleasantly. “Just step back here. Wouldn’t you like to lie down in the backseat? You were pretty well shaken up, you know.”
“No, I’m all right,” she said eagerly. “Let’s go quick! Every minute counts. My mother is dying. This medicine is the only hope!”
“I gotta have that address, lady. I can’t let ya go without that address!” said the policeman insistently.
The young man watched her as she gave the address. Camilla Chrystie, and a street he did not know down in the lower part of the city. He studied her trim, slender young figure, her refined, delicate profile.
“I ought to do something about my car, but I mustn’t stop now,” said Camilla breathlessly as the stranger helped her into his car.
“Look after that car, will you, Officer, till I can get back and see to it?” said the young man, tossing a bill across to the officer behind Camilla’s back.
When they were safely out of the thick of it he turned to Camilla, noting her strained, white face and the horrible anxiety that burned in her dark brown eyes.
“Now,” said the young man pleasantly, “my name’s Wainwright, Jeffrey Wainwright. Which way do we go?”
She gave him brief, crisp directions, as if she had learned them by heart.
“You’re very kind. I ought not to let you, I’m afraid. I’m probably hindering you a lot. But—you know what your mother is to you. There is nobody like your mother, and”—with a quiver of her breath—“and—she’s all I have in the world!”
“Of course!” said Wainwright with tender understanding in his tone, although he did not know. The conjured picture of his own mother showed her as he knew she probably was at that moment, elaborately gowned and playing bridge with a placid fierceness that was habitual to her. She had never been very close to him. He had known his nurses and his governesses, and later his tutors, better than his mother. Yet there was something wistful in his glance as he furtively watched the lovely girl by his side.
“We must get back to her as soon as possible,” he added, speeding up his car.
“I can’t ever thank you enough!” quavered Camilla.
“Don’t try, please. I’m just glad to be doing something worthwhile for once.”
“But I’m probably keeping you from some important engagement,” she said, coming out of her own troubles for an instant and giving a quick comprehensive glance at his handsome face, his immaculate evening attire, and the white gardenia in his buttonhole.
Wainwright stared ahead for an instant silently, then answered her deliberately, thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think it was important. In fact, it wasn’t really an engagement at all, and I shouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be a good thing that you have kept me from it!”
Camilla stared at him, perplexed, faintly perceiving that there were problems and crises in other lives as well as her own.
“I am sure,” she said contritely, “that I am taking you far out of your way.”
“On the contrary,” said Wainwright, “you are taking me in exactly the direction I was thinking of going before I saw your car.”
“Oh,” moaned Camilla, “but you are having to take me away back again!”
“But you see, my way leads back also,” smiled the young man playfully, hoping to relieve the girl’s evident strain. “And you know, it is odd, but somehow since decisions about the evening are taken out of my hands for a time, I am strangely relieved. I wasn’t at all certain about what I ought to do before, but now I am. And I don’t think I ever before had a chance to help save somebody’s life. I somehow think we’re going to win out, don’t you?”
The girl’s eyes in her white face were startling as they looked at him through the darkness.
“Oh, I hope—! I–I’ve been praying—all the way!”
Wainwright gave her a sudden quick glance.
“Well, I’ve never done much praying myself,” he said almost embarrassed, “but I’ll drive and you pray! Perhaps it’ll take them both. But we are out to win. Let’s set our minds to that. Now, is this were we turn?”
They drove on silently for some distance, sitting alertly, watching the road. Wainwright gave her a furtive glance now and then.
“Why don’t you lean back and relax?” he asked suddenly. “You’ve had a shock, and you need to rest.”
But Camilla remained tense.
“Oh, I can’t rest now,” she said with a catch in her breath like a suppressed sob. “I must get back to Mother!”
“But we’ll get back just as quickly if you relax, you know,” he reminded her sympathetically. “It seems hard that you should have had to come away at such a time. I can’t understand how the do
ctor allowed you to do it! There surely must have been someone else to go. I should think he would have gone himself or sent a special messenger.”
“He couldn’t,” said Camilla, lifting her strained face to his. “He couldn’t leave my mother. And there wasn’t anybody else who could be trusted to go. You see, his office is locked, and there was nobody at home to find the medicine and the instruments he wanted. He had to tell me exactly how to find everything he wanted. He is a very wonderful doctor. He saved my mother’s life once before, you see. He ought to have been called sooner. She wouldn’t let me send for him at first. She thought she was soon going to be better, and she felt we ought not to get in his debt again. He has always been so kind.”
Wainwright considered that. There were people in the world then, well-educated, cultured people, who couldn’t afford a doctor when they were desperately ill!
“But there surely must have been somebody else in the house he could have trusted without taking you away from your mother when she was so ill,” he protested.
“No, there wasn’t anybody in the house but a woman who rooms on the floor above us. She’s staying there to help the doctor if he needs anything while I am gone. She can bring hot water and answer the telephone if I have to call him.”
There was desperation in the girl’s voice again, and he pressed harder on the gas pedal and drove fast, but he could see her white eyes watching every bit of the way.
“This is the street!” she announced at last. “It’s in the middle of the next block, the fourth house on the right-hand side.”
“But there’s no light in the house!” said Wainwright as they drew up to the curb. “Is there nobody there at all?”
“No,” said Camilla breathlessly, “the doctor’s assistant won’t be back until midnight, and his family is away in the south for a few weeks.”
“Well, you’re not going in there alone, that’s certain!” said Wainwright in a firm voice, as if he had been used to protecting this girl for years.