The Flower Brides

  But Camilla was not waiting for protection. Before the car had fully come to a halt she was out, fairly flying up the steps of the house, and was fitting a key into the lock of the door. As Wainwright followed her, he was relieved to see a dignified bronze sign on the house. The girl hadn’t made a mistake in the house, then. It was a doctor’s office.

  Camilla’s excited fingers had just succeeded in getting the key into the keyhole as he arrived, and putting his hand over hers, he turned the key and threw open the door.

  “The switch is at the right hand!” said Camilla crisply. “The first three buttons he said would light the hall and offices.”

  Wainwright found the switch and instantly a spacious hall and doors to the left appeared, and Camilla drew a free breath.

  “It’s all right!” she said eagerly. “I was afraid I might have made a mistake in the house or something. But there’s his wife’s picture on the desk and his little girl and boy on the wall. And there’s the package on his desk where he said it would be. You see, it’s some special medicine he had sent away for that might have come after he left this morning. He wasn’t quite sure it had arrived.”

  Her voice choked with excitement, and Wainwright looked at her, for the first time seeing her face clearly by the bright light and realizing that she was lovely.

  “Is that all you had to get?” he asked, giving a quick interested glance around the office that gave so many evidences of culture and refinement.

  “No,” said Camilla, “there’s a leather case, a black leather case, on the desk in the back room or perhaps on the floor by the desk. I’m to bring that. And a big bottle on the highest shelf of the cabinet in the other room. If it isn’t there it may have been put on the inner closet shelf. He may have to be with Mother all night and not have time to get back to his office before he goes to an operation.”

  There was a quick catch in her breath at the thought of the possibilities the night might bring forth, but she controlled herself bravely.

  They found the bottle and the case without any trouble.

  “Now, do we go?” asked Wainwright.

  “No,” said Camilla, “I’m to call up first, to make sure there is nothing else he needs.”

  Her eyes grew suddenly dark with anxiety, and her hand trembled as she reached for the telephone.

  Wainwright watched her again with admiration. The delicate flush that had been on her face as she hunted for the bottle and case had drained away, and her face was white with anguish again as she waited for the doctor’s voice.

  “It’s Camilla, Dr. Willis,” she said with that catch like a sob in her voice again. “How is she?”

  Wainwright, as he stood near her, could hear the quiet voice of the doctor.

  “No worse, Camilla. I think her pulse is a trifle steadier. Did you find everything?”

  “Yes, everything.”

  “Well, hurry back. I hate to think of you driving all that way and going into an empty house alone!”

  “But I’m not alone,” said Camilla shyly, with the shadow of a smile on her lips. “I found a—a kind friend on the way who came with me!” Her eyes sought Wainwright’s gratefully. He smiled back at her, and somehow comradeship seemed suddenly to be cemented between them. It was so odd! Two strangers who never expected to meet again after that evening and yet they seemed somehow well acquainted all at once.

  When they had turned out the lights and locked the door, Wainwright drew her arm through his possessive, comforting grasp as they walked back to the car.

  When he put her into the car she sat back with a breath of relief.

  “She’s no worse!” she said, looking up at him radiantly as he took the wheel again, and now that he knew how she really looked in the light, it seemed a lovely glimpse of her inner self.

  “Isn’t that great!” he breathed fervently in almost the same tone of rejoicing she had used. Being glad with someone gave him a new thrill. He had seldom been called upon to experience unselfish joy. In his world you got and you gave mostly for your own pleasure. Now it seemed that he was touching deeper, more vital matters. Sin and danger and trifling with doom could give thrills. He had hovered near enough to each one to understand. But this was new and sweet. He looked at her almost tenderly through the darkness, and then he laid his hand gently for just an instant over her small, gloved one.

  “I’m so glad for you!” he said gravely.

  “Thank you,” she said brightly. “You’ve been just wonderful! I don’t know how I should have gone through this awful evening without you.”

  Then she was silent a minute, thoughtful.

  “Was that all true, what the policeman said about my car?” she asked presently. There was a hint of anxiety in her voice, yet her manner was strong, controlled, practical, ready to accept the worst quietly.

  “Well, it’s hard to say exactly,” he answered with a quick reserve in his voice. “It did look rather badly beaten up, didn’t it? But usually a good mechanic can do something with almost any car, you know.” He tried to say it cheerfully, although his better sense told him that the little car was beyond help. “Suppose we wait for daylight and expert advice before we try to think about it.”

  Camilla sighed. “Yes, but expert advice costs a great deal, and I simply couldn’t afford anything just now, I’m afraid. I shall want to use every cent to make Mother comfortable.”

  “Of course!” he seconded her heartily. “But your insurance will cover all that, you know. You had insurance, of course, didn’t you?”

  “No,” said Camilla sadly. “I couldn’t. I bought the car for fifty dollars, and it took all I had saved to get the licenses and one secondhand tire it needed.” She ended with a brave little attempt at a laugh.

  He was appalled at such details, but he did not let her know it. “Oh well, it will be up to the owner of the truck, anyway,” he said with more assurance than he felt. “Sometimes, of course, they try to slide out of such moral obligations, but you let me handle this. I’ll make it a point to call upon him tomorrow and put the thing before him in the right light. Don’t you worry.”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t let you do anything more!” said Camilla in a frightened voice. “You have already done more than any stranger could possibly be expected to do.”

  “Is that the way you rate me?” he said reproachfully with a twinkle in his voice. “Only a stranger, after we’ve gone on an errand like this? I thought we were friends now.”

  Camilla gave him another look in the darkness, of mingled pleasure and surprise.

  “You have certainly taken more trouble than any friend I have would have taken,” she said earnestly. “The truth is, I haven’t many friends in this city. We haven’t been here long, only about nine months. I haven’t had time to make friends.”

  “Then you’ll let me count as a friend?” he asked gravely. “At least until your mother gets well and you have time to look me over?”

  He smiled down at her through the darkness, and she felt a comforting sense of being taken care of in a sort of brotherly way.

  “You certainly do not need any special looking over,” said Camilla gravely, “after the way you have befriended me tonight.”

  There was a weary strain in her tone that made him look anxiously at her. It occurred to him that perhaps she had been more hurt in the collision than she would own.

  “Are you sure you are all right?” he asked earnestly.

  “Oh yes,” she said, rousing again and putting on that forced attention she had worn since they started on their errand.

  “Well, we’ll get you home as quickly as possible,” he said, and he began to question her as to where her street was located.

  He purposely avoided the scene of the accident and took a shortcut, for fortunately, he know the city well. He tried to talk cheerfully as he furtively watched her droop in her corner. It was all too evident that she had been keeping up on her nerve, and now that her errand was almost completed she was beginning to feel the reacti
on.

  It was with great relief that he presently drew up at the house she indicated and helped her out, following her with the case and bottle. She took the little package of medicine and fairly flew up the steps and into the house.

  Chapter 2

  It was a small, high, old-fashioned brick house with white marble steps of a long-ago vintage, in an unfashionable quarter of the city, invaded now by business on every hand. The other houses on either side and across from it bore signs in the windows: VACANCIES, APARTMENTS TO LET, BOARDING. It was a sordid, dreary street. But Wainwright did not wait to examine the surroundings. He hurried into the house, finding a strange anxiety at his own heart for the sick mother whom he had never seen.

  The hall was of the dark, narrow type with steep stairs mounting straight up to a darker hall above. It seemed gloomy beyond description. But at the right, one half of a double door stood open, and there the gloom ceased, for the room into which it opened was surprisingly cozy and homelike. Soft lamplight, rosily shaded, played over some handsome pieces of old furniture and a good picture or two on the walls. A soft-toned rug covered the floor. There was even a speck of a fireplace with a log smoldering flickeringly and an easy chair placed beside it. And there were low bookshelves running across the room on either side of the fireplace and bits of good bric-a-brac here and there on the top shelf. It looked a pleasant place to live.

  Between the front windows was a long old-fashioned mirror in a quaint gilt frame, and in that he saw reflected the room beyond, which in the parlance of other days would have been called a back parlor.

  The double doors between the rooms were open, and he caught a glimpse of a wide old-fashioned bed, too large for the room, and a delicate face on the pillow, framed in silver-white hair. It was a face strangely sweet and filled with a great peace. He held his breath. Was she dead already? He could see Camilla touching her lips to the white brow with a caress as soft as a breath and then dropping quietly to her knees beside the bed. The doctor stood there with his back to the door, his hand on the frail wrist of the sick woman.

  Wainwright hesitated in the hall, wondering whether it would be intrusion to step inside the front room and put down the doctor’s case and bottle.

  Then the doctor turned and saw him, his quick eye noting what he carried, and he stepped quietly out into the hall.

  “What more can I do here?” asked Wainwright in a low tone, handing over the doctor’s case. “I’m at your service as long as I can help.”

  The doctor gave him a keen glance.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be glad to accept that offer. We need a nurse at once. Could you go and bring her? I don’t want Camilla to leave her mother again. I can’t tell how things are coming out yet. Besides, that woman who rooms upstairs is so incapable, she can’t even boil water.”

  “I’ll go,” said Wainwright quickly. “Have you one in mind, or do I hunt one up?”

  “Miss York,” said the doctor briefly. “I phoned. She’s free. She’ll be ready when you get there. Here’s the address.”

  “All right,” said Wainwright, taking the slip of paper the doctor handed him. “But before I go I must tell you, for I’m afraid Miss Chrystie won’t think of it— You’d better look her over a little. She’s been in a bad accident. Her car was all smashed up. She’s very brave. She insists she’s all right, but she’s just keeping up on her nerve.”

  The doctor gave him a quick look.

  “You don’t say!” he exclaimed. “I somehow felt I ought not to let her go alone.”

  “She didn’t get far alone,” said the young man. “I happened along and saw it all. We picked her up for dead, but she snapped out of it wonderfully and was only anxious to get on with her errand. I’m afraid, though, that she’s about all in, with the shock and anxiety together.”

  He gave the details briefly and then went out after the nurse.

  It was not a long trip, and the nurse was waiting when he reached her lodgings, so they were soon back at the house again.

  Camilla was lying on the couch in the front room when they entered the house; her eyes were closed and her face was wan and white. But her eyes flew open as they came in, and she sat up at once.

  Wainwright went toward her and gently pushed her back to the pillow again.

  “Please!” he said in a whisper. “You’ll need your strength, you know. You must save yourself. Here’s Miss York. She’ll attend to everything. And I’m here to help her as long as I’m needed. I’m a friend tonight, you know.” And his face lit up with a sweet, gentle smile. Camilla felt again that sense of being protected and cared for in a peculiar way.

  “But I must get a room ready for her,” said Camilla anxiously as she yielded to his persuasive hand and lay still on her pillow.

  “I can do that,” asserted Wainwright firmly, as though he were quite accustomed to getting rooms ready for people. “What you need is a little rest or there’ll be two patients here instead of one. That wouldn’t be so good, you know.”

  He smiled again with a flash of his perfect teeth, and she succumbed.

  “But you don’t know where things are,” said Camilla weakly, with a worried pucker on her white brow.

  “I can learn, can’t I? Where were you planning to put her?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Camilla in a troubled voice. “She’ll have to have the dining room, I suppose. We’ll eat in the kitchen. I wasn’t planning. I didn’t know she was coming. Oh, why did you bring her here? She will be so crowded here! We really haven’t a need for a nurse now I am back.”

  “It was the doctor’s orders. I only went after her,” said Wainwright serenely. “He had already phoned for her before we got back. He thought you ought not to be alone when he has to leave. He said there ought to be someone here who knows what to do in an emergency.”

  “Oh!” said Camilla with a little sharp breath like a moan, paling at the word emergency.

  “Of course, there may not be any emergency. We hope there won’t be,” went on Wainwright with a calm, steady voice and another quieting smile, “but it is always best to provide against one, you know. Now, could you just tell me what needs doing and where to find things? You must promise to lie still and wait till I come for instructions and not get up and run around, or I’ll have to lock you in here till we have things in order.”

  There was a twinkle in his eye as he said it, but somehow his firm chin looked as if he really might do it if he were disobeyed. Camilla resigned herself, for the moment at least.

  “Well, there’s a cot in the third-story back storeroom. There’s an eiderdown quilt there and two blankets. A pillow, too.”

  She glanced at his immaculate evening attire and gave a little moan.

  “Oh, you oughtn’t to be doing things like that! Not with that beautiful coat on!” She put her hands together with a little helpless motion. “Oh, please! It distresses me!”

  “My coat will come off,” said Wainwright, with a grin, and quickly whipped off, first his handsome overcoat, then his formal evening coat.

  She had to smile, he was so like a nice big boy, oblivious to the whiteness of his shirt front.

  “Now,” he said, “that’s better! Keep that expression on till I get back. I’m all set for the storeroom on the third floor!”

  The words were very low. They did not penetrate to the sickroom, although the door was open. Turning swiftly, he went up the stairs with an incredibly soft tread. Even the creaky stairs were unbelievably silent under his careful strides. It was not long before he was moving down again, bearing a light cot under one arm and an eiderdown quilt in the other.

  She was standing in the hall when he returned, holding clean sheets, blankets, and a pillow in a case, which she had taken from the shelves in the hall closet. She motioned him to follow her to the dining room and walked lightly as a feather.

  He followed her quietly, but when he had put down the cot and taken the bedclothing from her, laying it on the table, he stopped and p
icked her up in his arms, as if she had been a blanket, and bore her back to the couch in the front room.

  “You are a naughty child!” he whispered. “You must be good, or I shall be forced to stay here and hold you down.”

  She looked up and saw a pleasant grin upon his face, but there was something in his eyes and the firm mouth that made her lie back again and relax.

  “I’m really quite all right,” she protested.

  He stopped and whispered softly in her ear.

  “If you will not do it for yourself, won’t you do it for her sake?” He motioned with his head toward the sickroom.

  This had an instant effect in the look of fear that came into her eyes. Then after an instant’s quiet she said, “If you’ll just let me get up and make that bed, then I can rest.”

  “I can make beds!” he declared earnestly. “I went to military school and learned how!” He grinned, and she succumbed.

  He slipped off his shoes and disappeared into the dining room. She heard soft little swishing sounds of a hand on the smooth sheets, but for the most part it was very still. Only the creak of a board in the floor now and then. She raised her head and tried to look through her mother’s room into the dining room to the left. She could see the foot of the cot and a hand tucking the blanket in with military precision, a nice, white, well-groomed hand that did not look as if it had made up a bed in many a day. Then she heard soft footsteps and lay down quickly lest he would return and find her disobeying orders.

  The doctor was speaking to the nurse in low professional growls. The nurse on her rubber-shod feet went swiftly to the kitchen. Camilla could hear running water. Wainwright had gone out into the kitchen. She could hear him talking softly to the nurse. Then the doctor went out and the nurse came back. Camilla lay there staring up at the ceiling, glancing now and then into the dimness of her mother’s room, longing to be in there watching the doctor’s face to know just what he was thinking at every passing minute about the possibilities of fear or hope.