Stranger within the Gates (10 page)

So they went to a sordid, forlorn hotel that was really nothing more than a cheap roadhouse on the back country road, and Florimel showered endearments upon him and smiles on the way, till she brought him back to think of her again and how good it was going to be to make her happy.

But after they had dined, he stood by the window gazing out at a bleak countryside then turned with disgust from the noisy room with its blatant radio and its cheap assembly of unpleasant, uncongenial people.

"This is a lousy place!" he said. "I wish we hadn't come here. This is no place for a honeymoon!"

"Oh, but you mustn't say that!" protested the girl. "This is our honeymoon. Forget the things you don't like, and let's have the time of our lives! Let's go in the other room and dance!"

Then she exerted herself to make him think of nothing but herself, and for a little while succeeded. But the place and the time that was not his to spend this way kept intruding into his thoughts. Then Florimel would fling her lithe young body against his, slide her warm little hand possessively into his hand, lay her soft red mouth against his lips in a brief moment of privacy, and he would forget everything except this wonderful glamour girl who loved him and who was worthy of a far better honeymoon than the one he was trying to let her have these two days.

That was the way it all happened, so that afterward that honeymoon became a dream memory, full of strange, sweet incidents, with a background of worry, like lovely poison that came to him with sinister menace as they made their way back to the college town very late Sunday night, at an hour that most people would have called Monday morning.

Back in his college room he flung himself down on his bed unwilling to waken his roommate who was sleeping, and then what he had done rushed upon him like a fierce tribunal and put him through the ordeal of a regular trial, wherein he found himself deeply guilty.

It was that day, later on, being unable to get away from the sense of guilt, now that Florimel was not about to dull his mind with her glamour, that he wrote his mother and told the truth.

Always, as a little boy, when he had done wrong he was uneasy until he had told his mother. His brother Paul used to say about him that Rex always felt if he could just tell his mother, he didn't have to be sorry for what he had done anymore. Perhaps that feeling lingered with him. For at least he seemed beset behind and before with the thought of his family and what they would say when they found out what he had done. He could not settle down to think or study until his mother knew. After the letter was written and mailed, he plunged into his college work with all his might to make up for lost time and seemed to cast the whole thing from him.

He had a feeling that now that his mother knew--that is, when she got his letter--she would somehow help him to make all things right. He would take Florimel home for Christmas, and she would become one of them all, then his way would go on happily.

Fortunately for his own peace of mind, he had very little opportunity to see his new wife all the rest of that week, that is, to see her alone. The basketball games and his examinations filled up all the hours. And when he did hurry down to the pie shop for a few minutes, frequently Florimel was so busy she had only time to cast a quick smile in his direction.

But when the examinations were all out of the way and he got a moment alone with Florimel, he found her strangely reluctant to go to his home with him. She put it on the ground of shyness. She wanted to be perfectly sure what his mother thought of their hasty marriage before she went there. And so from day to day, and then from hour to hour, he was not just sure how his affairs were going to come out, for Florimel did not give in easily. If they could possibly have got together money enough for a "real holiday," as she called it, she would have insisted that they go to the shore or some winter resort, for she was eager to see life, and she had understood that she had married a young man who was fairly well off and would be more so someday. Not that Rex had told her much except that until he reached full legal age he had only an allowance, which was mostly all spent just now, and he didn't expect more till after the holidays. But now she began to urge him to borrow money enough for them to have a good time. He wouldn't, of course. He had been well drilled on things like borrowing money before ever his mother sent him away to college, but Florimel couldn't understand why he wouldn't. Now that he had told his mother they were married, she ought to make everything right for them, and Florimel fought hard against going there to spend Christmas. So they argued and argued, and Rex compromised, first on one small thing and then another, that took almost the last cent Rex had.

And still he thought he was very much in love with his bride.

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 pie 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.