Stranger within the Gates

Paul barged into the house while they were at dinner Friday evening, excited, eager, overwhelmingly glad to get home, greeting them all almost boisterously. And that wasn't like Paul, for it was natural for him to be rather grave and serious. But he hadn't been home but once since he left in the fall, and he had been working very hard.

  "It's great to be here again," he exclaimed, after he had paid his taxi and set down his baggage.

  He enfolded his mother in a close embrace and kissed her on both cheeks, and the pretty color came into Mary Garland's face, making her look almost like a young girl. What a relief it was to have Paul at last. She felt that the worst of the strain was almost over.

  Paul kissed his sisters; in his old teasing way, clapped Stan on the shoulder and told him he heard he had been holding his own as man of the house in a swell way; and then he went back and kissed his mother again.

  "Gee, Mom, I've missed you like everything!" he said.

  A minute later Mary Garland remembered.

  "But Paul, where is Rex?" She looked beyond him and toward the door. One of her white hands flew to her throat, and a ghastly worry came into her eyes.

  "Why, isn't Rex here yet? I thought he would be here before me, but I suppose he got delayed. You see, he left a note on my desk this morning saying he had a chance to drive up with somebody and he thought he might beat me to it. You never can tell, however, when you are dependent on somebody else, how many places they may want to stop over or how many flat tires they may get on the way. Don't look so worried, Mother; there's nothing to be alarmed about. He'll come barging in pretty soon, I'm sure."

  But the entire family continued to look at him in that frightened, startled way, as if something terrible had happened.

  "Then--you don't know yet--what's happened!" said Stan in a dignified, elderly way, as if his position as man of the house made it necessary for him to take the responsibility of explaining.

  "Don't know what?" said Paul, speaking sharply, impatiently, an apprehensive look coming into his eyes. He looked from Stan to his mother and back to his brother.

  "Then you don't know Rex is married!" blurted out Stan with a choke in his voice.

  "Married?" laughed Paul. "You're crazy! Where did you get that idea? I never heard such nonsense. Where did you get such folly, I say?"

  "Mother had a letter," said Stan, and Paul's eyes, wide with unbelief and disgust, turned toward his mother.

  "Yes," she said. "It's true, Paul!" And she broke down weeping. "Go get the letter, Sylvia. It's under my little jewel tray in my upper bureau drawer." Then her self-control gave way, and she covered her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking with her emotion.

  Paul gathered her into his arms and tried to soothe her, patting her shoulders and smoothing her hair.

  "But it can't be true, Muzzie. You know I've seen Rex practically every day, and he's always going along fine. I haven't seen him around with girls much, either. You know we don't go to the dances. It isn't in our line."

  Sylvia was back in a moment with the letter, handing it out with the air of one who bore the weapon that had just killed a beloved one, and retired solemnly to her chair.

  Paul took the letter with the air of handling a joke that he was about to explain away, and they waited breathless while he read it. His arm was still about his mother, her head on his shoulder. His dark brows were drawn in a frown as he read.

  "But, Mother, I can't see how this can possibly be so!" he said in a puzzled voice. "He couldn't have got married and nobody else know. I tell you, he hasn't been around with girls, and he hasn't been off visiting weekends, or anything like that. I've made it my business to watch out for him, you know."

  He looked down at his mother's sad face and noted the drooping weariness of her body, then drew her over to the couch and sat down beside her, one arm still about her.

  "I can't understand it," he said, "unless this is his idea of a joke! But Rex was never like that."

  "No," said his mother eagerly, "never like that!"

  "But--Mother, what have you done? Why didn't you get in touch with me at once?"

  He looked at the date of the letter.

  "Why, you've known this for several days! And you didn't do anything? You should have called me at once!"

  "I did call Rex, right away, but they couldn't find him. They said he was in class, first, and then they said he wasn't. I didn't want to disturb you in the midst of an examination perhaps, so I tried to get Rex. I kept on calling him, every little while, and finally I sent him a telegram to come home at once. But before it could have got there, the college called me and said he was just running for a train to Buffalo, that he was playing on the basketball team there and he couldn't stop to come to the phone. He would call me up when he got back in the morning. So then I did try to call you, Paul, and the word came back that you had gone to Buffalo to the game, too."

  "That's right," said Paul with distress in his eyes. "I went to the game. Almost everybody went. It was a great game and meant a lot to the college. I wanted to see how my kid brother did, you know, the first big game he's had. And he was swell, Mother, simply swell! He shot several beautiful baskets. But Mother, I don't see why they didn't tell me when I got back that night that you had called."

  "Well, I didn't try you again. I thought you would have been up late, and there were more examinations that next day; and besides, I had sent Rex that telegram and thought he would surely call up pretty soon and I wouldn't need to bother you until I knew more about it. But when he called, he hardly had time to talk. He said he had important classes and wanted to know what I meant by ordering him home before the term was over. I told him that if what he had said in that letter was true, that examinations and classes didn't make any difference now and I wanted him to come right home. But all he said was, 'Aw, you don't understand. I've got to hurry. Good-bye, I'll see you soon,' and that's the last I've heard from him."

  Mary Garland tried to stop the tears, which were again in full force, and Paul drew her close to him and put his lips down to her tear-drenched face, trying to comfort her.

  "There, there, Mother! I'm sure there must be some mistake about this! Don't worry! Rex will surely be here soon, and he'll explain it all. You know, Mother, he's a good kid!"

  Her heart leaped up at that. It was what had made this whole thing so bitter to understand--how Rex could have done this thing to her. Although she was not one who thought a great deal of herself, she knew that Rex loved her deeply, and how could he help but know what pain he had given? If he was suddenly in love with somebody, surely he could have waited a little. Surely he could have given them some warning, and they could have arranged a quiet little wedding, if they insisted on it so soon, even though he was so young!

  They talked it over gravely, carefully, and considered every phase of that possibility. And in the midst of it all they awoke to the fact that Paul had had no dinner. They summoned Selma, who adored "Mr. Paul," and with smiles produced plenty to eat, good and hot.

  "I was keepin' it warm for ye," she acknowledged with a shy smile.

  So while Paul ate they sat around and talked it over. And suddenly the question of the girl came to the front as she had not done before.

  "But, Paul, haven't you any idea who the girl could be?" asked his mother.

  "Not in the least!" said Paul decidedly. "There aren't any girls at all around the college, that is, girls that would be at all in his class. The waiters at the college are all fellows who are earning part of their way in college. The telephone operator in the college happens to be an oldish woman. She used to be a teacher in the town, and she had a fall that left her lame, so the college gave her this position to help her out. Her family were somehow connected with the college."

  "Aren't there any girls in the village?"

  "Why, there isn't any village, much, you know. Just a few stores, a couple of restaurants. Of course, they have waitresses in the restaurants, and there are girls in the telephone office. There's one in the p
ie shop, rather startlingly attractive, with platinum-blond hair, or maybe that isn't it. It's more like the color of nasturtiums. Anyway, it isn't natural. They call her Florimel. But I'm quite sure Rex wouldn't have anything to do with her. I will say she has a 'come-hither' in her big gray eyes, but she's away and above older than Rex, and anyway, you know he has some sense, Mother."

  "I've heard that common sense doesn't count for much when people think they are in love."

  "In love!" snorted Paul. "Rex in love! That's ridiculous!"

  But his mother sat there and sighed and tried to check the slow tears that kept stealing out upon her face, trickling gently down to her chin, and dripping off, until the children's hearts were wrung. Mother had been so brave and cheerful all these awful days, and now here that Paul had come to help she had gone to pieces! They didn't realize that she had been relying on Paul to dispel the trouble in some unexpected way, and Paul hadn't been able to do it. He had tried; he didn't believe it was true, he said, but he wasn't in the least convincing. And now there had taken form a very definite girl. She might not be the one, of course, but her frilly name, Florimel, expressed all the fear and dread of her that had been forming during their anxiety.

  Paul swallowed the last bite of pie that Selma had brought, glancing at his watch, and then announced, "I'm going to call up the college. It's time that kid was here, and if he doesn't come pretty soon and I can't find out any good reason for his delay, I sure will wallop him when he does get here." So he strode across the hall to the telephone.

  The family slipped one by one into the living room and waited for him.

  It took a long time, but Mary Garland understood that. She had had experience of how unsatisfactory it was to call that college, especially out of hours when the regular operator was not supposed to be on duty. So they sat patiently, like those who wait for life-and-death crises at the hospital where dear friends are in critical situations. But at last Paul came into the room.

  "I can't get much satisfaction there," he announced with an artificial cheeriness that did not deceive his mother. "Almost everybody has gone home for Christmas, or else doesn't know anything. At last I got the office boy, and he says Rex left early this morning in a car. He says he's sure. He says he saw him, and he was with another fellow, one of the college boys, he thinks; but he didn't look very closely, and they were some distance away, so he couldn't be sure which boy."

  Mary Garland gave him a hopeless look and remained pitifully silent.

  "Well," said Stan with a note of relief in his voice, "if he didn't see any girl around, then that settles that somewhat, doesn't it?"

  "He might have picked her up later," said Fae keenly.

  A look flashed over Paul's face.

  "I'll try something else," he said and went back to the telephone. But he didn't tell them he had called up the pie shop and asked for Florimel, neither did he tell them that the owner of the pie shop had told him that Florimel was off for the holidays. They said she drove off that morning in a hired car with a couple of college boys. But Paul didn't come right back to the living room after he heard that. He called up two or three other fellows who he knew were staying at college and asked them if they had seen Rex, and one of them said Rex told him that morning he was off for home. He hadn't seen him around since, so he guessed he was gone. Then Paul tried several other calls but got no satisfaction. And presently he came back and told them that everybody agreed that Rex had gone home, so it was probably true that he had started off with somebody in the car, and very likely the other guy had sidetracked him for a while and he had to wait to be brought on, or maybe the other fellow wasn't coming all the way and Rex had to wait for a train. Or they'd had a flat tire or something. And why didn't Mother go to bed now? He was here and could keep watch for his brother. But he said not one word about Florimel.

  But no, Mary Garland would not go to bed. She wanted to sit up and wait. Surely Rex would come pretty soon. And anyway, Paul was here, after the long months without him, and she wanted to be with him and hear all about everything.

  So Paul talked. He told them all about his examinations. He described his teachers and some of his classmates and made a pretty good job of keeping the atmosphere lively, as if nothing had happened and they were just waiting for Rex to come, sure that he would come pretty soon.

  But by this time Paul wasn't at all easy in his mind. He was trying to rack his memory and think if he had ever seen Rex with Florimel, but try as hard as he would he couldn't remember.

  He wouldn't ever have connected Rex with Florimel in any way. He wouldn't have thought she was his type. In fact, Rex had never been a ladies' man. But somehow he didn't trust a girl like Florimel. His impression of her was, from the few times he had noticed her, that she was ready with her smiles and her sly eyes to make up to any lad who would notice her. He hadn't liked her type, and he had never joked with her when she waited upon him at the pie shop as some of the rest of the fellows did. But surely, surely, Rex, with his fine upbringing, his high ideals, and his love for mother and sisters, would never get in the toils of a girl like that! It couldn't be.

  But yet as he talked on, passing time, trying in some other way to account for Rex's strange behavior, the idea of Florimel kept gnawing like some little beast of prey in the back of his mind and worrying him to the last degree. Florimel and Rex! What an impossible combination! How were they ever to endure, if it was true?

  The hour was growing late, and Fae, curled up on the floor beside her mother's couch, was almost asleep. Sylvia, under the big lamp, was hemstitching a handkerchief that was to be one of her Christmas gifts for an aunt up in New York. She wore a dejected look. Stan was sitting over by the front window where he could watch the drive and see the first minute a car turned into it. Stan was looking suddenly grown up and as if he were carrying great burdens. He hadn't even brightened up much at the very elaborate account of the basketball game in Buffalo, in which Rex had starred so wonderfully. Paul had made the account last as long as possible, but he realized as he went on that perhaps he was only succeeding in making them see Rex in all his best lights and filling them with terror at the thought of what he had done.

  And then as he paused, trying to get a different topic, thinking perhaps he would tell them about his own successes and turn their thoughts away from Rex a little while, the mother spoke out of a great sorrowful silence.

  "What kind of a girl is this Florimel? You didn't mean she was not respectable, did you, Paul?"

  Paul turned and realized that his mother had not been blinded by his silence. Her mind had caught the worst possible construction and turned it over in her thoughts.

  "Mother!" he said distractedly. "You mustn't get such ideas. I just spoke of that girl because I wanted to show you there wasn't anyone there that Rex could possibly get entangled with. No girls except visiting ones at dances. No, I don't think she is not respectable. Just silly, perhaps. She may not even be that. I truly don't know much about her. It isn't, of course, a nice position for a girl in a college town, to be a waitress in a pie shop where the fellows go, but for all I know, she's perfectly respectable. Mother, you simply must forget about her. If this is true about Rex, which I'm not at all sure it is, then it's probably something perfectly all right. That is, as right as it could be to marry anyone at his age. So please try not to think it out and torture yourself anymore. Now, why won't you all go to bed and rest? Rex ought to be here in a very short time now; that is, if he isn't held up by a flat tire or something like that. Or, it may be he finds it necessary to stay all night with the fellow who brought him."

  "In which case, of course, he ought to telephone me," said Mary Garland sadly. "No, Paul, I've had three days to think this thing over carefully, and I'm satisfied there is something absolutely wrong about it all. Something that perhaps Rex is ashamed of, and he is afraid to come home after what I said to him about his classes not being important now. I'm afraid I let him see too clearly how I felt about what he had done. P
erhaps he has decided not to come home at all."

  "Nonsense!" said Paul sharply. "How could he? Mother, he hasn't got any money to hang around anywhere. I know that for a fact because Rex borrowed ten dollars from me before he started for Buffalo, so he can't be very flush. He wanted more, but I couldn't spare it."

  "Oh!" moaned the mother and lay very still with her hand shading her trembling lips and her tortured eyes.

  "Say, Mother," said Paul, jumping up and walking over to the couch, "would you feel better if I took the midnight train and went back to college and scouted around to see if I can locate Rex? Or to find out just when and how he left the town? I can, you know. There is a midnight train, and"--he glanced at his watch--"I've just about time to catch it. Then when I get there, if I find out anything I can telephone you at once and ease your mind a little. Wouldn't you like me to do that?"

  The room was very still while Mary Garland turned that over in her mind. Then she shook her head.

  "No, Paul, you'd better stay here. I need you. If Rex is really married, it would make him very angry to know that you had gone hunting him. And as you say, he may be staying overnight with whoever is bringing him, although I can't think why he wouldn't telephone if he could. But I guess we've got to be patient and wait. He'll likely come later, or at least in the morning. If he doesn't, we can think what to do then. But you had better stay here. I'm glad you have come, Son."

  Paul stooped down and kissed her.

  "Dear brave little Moms!" he breathed gently. "I'll do whatever you want."

  She smiled sadly.

  "Yes, I know, and I'm glad to have you here. It's a comfort."

  In a moment she looked up again and around upon them all, and then she sat up.

  "Children," she said, and her voice was very gentle. "I think perhaps we need to ask God to help us. I think perhaps we've drifted a long way from our heavenly Father since your earthly father went away, and it's my fault. Suppose we just bow our heads right here and ask our Father to help us. There really isn't anything we can do to help ourselves tonight, that I see. We don't want to call in the police to help us search. Our Father knows all about it. Let us pray to Him about it."