“Oh, I am. It is good that you think I am like her. I shall enjoy knowing you so much, I am sure. I shall be so glad if you will be my friend.”
“Why, of course, my dear. I’ll love to be that. But I thought you had moved away somewhere. I haven’t heard that any of the Sheridan family were left in this part of the world.”
“She just came back to try living here,” explained Pilgrim. “She felt rather alone, and I told her I thought she would enjoy knowing you. You had always been so good to me, I dared to bring her here.”
“Well, that’s beautiful,” said Mrs. Gray. “And I shall be so glad if she will come often to see me. You know, I’m going to be very lonesome this winter. My nephew, who has been living with me since his wife died, has gone to Canada and joined the British army. He is already in England now, and so I am entirely alone. I’ll just love having company. And now, Phil, tell me all about yourself, your college, what you did, and where you are going now that you are a soldier.”
Pilgrim gave her a nice grin.
“Thanks for your interest,” he said. “I graduated all right. Did some athletic work and other things to help me through financially, and the next thing, of course, was to join the army. It seemed to be the right thing to do. Naturally it wasn’t just what I would have chosen to come next in life after I finished college, but it had to be, because war didn’t consult me when it decided to come our way. So I enlisted. My camp is down in Virginia just now, but there is likelihood we’ll be moved in a few days.”
“You’re home for the weekend? A furlough?”
“Not exactly,” said Pilgrim. “I got word the government wanted to buy my land for a munitions factory and got leave to come home and go through the formalities of the sale.”
“You don’t say! Now that’s interesting, isn’t it? But don’t you hate to give up the old home?”
“No,” said Pilgrim, a cloud coming over the brightness of his face. “I never had any love for it. The folks are all dead, you know, and there wasn’t much joy ever up there.”
“Yes, I remember,” the dear little woman sighed sympathetically. “Well, then it’s nice that you could sell it.”
“I thought so,” said Pilgrim.
Then the lady turned to Laurel.
“And now, tell me about you. Are you just here visiting, or are you coming back to live?”
“No, I’m not visiting,” said Laurel. “I have a job. Of course I’m not sure how long it will last or whether I can fill it. I’m to start Monday teaching in the high school where a teacher was sick and has gone to California.”
“Oh, my dear. Then you are going to be here. How fortunate for me! Then I may really hope to see you this winter. At least until you get into the life of the town, I suppose.”
“I don’t believe there is any life in this town that would keep me from visiting the new friend I think you look as if you might be.”
“You sweet child! And so you’re going to teach in the high school. What fortunate students to have a girl like you for their teacher!”
And so they talked on, getting better and better acquainted, and finally Mrs. Gray turned to Pilgrim. “Philip, did you say you are going to be here over Sunday?”
“Yes. I can’t leave till I have been up to the place to meet the engineers about the dividing lines. They want me to help locate the original surveyors’ marks. It may take some time.”
“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Gray. “Well I’m glad you’re staying, for I thought it would be nice if you two were to take dinner with me tomorrow just to sort of cement our friendship and as a reminder of the days when you were a little boy and I knew you. Could you both do that?” She turned her glance from Pilgrim’s face to the sweet face of the girl. “Or had you both some other plan for the day, Miss Sheridan? Perhaps some of your old friends have already asked you? I don’t want to be selfish, of course.”
Laurel laughed a sweet ripple of a laugh. “My old friends, if there are any of them left here, don’t even know I have come back. No, I haven’t a thing to do tomorrow but to get through the day in a strange boardinghouse, so I’ll be just delighted to come, whatever Phil does.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for anything!” said Pilgrim with a look as if he had been invited into heaven for a few hours.
“Well, that will be just perfect!” said Mrs. Gray, her eyes shining. “And say, I wonder if I dare go a little farther and ask you if you would mind coming over early enough to go to church with me? Do you know, I always feel so lonely going to church alone since my nephew left me. It would be nice to have a couple of dear young people with me. And I kind of think you will enjoy the sweet, simple little church where I go. It isn’t a great church, and not many of them are wealthy, but they love the Lord, and I think you couldn’t help seeing how genuine they are.”
“Why of course we’ll go with you, Mrs. Gray,” said Laurel earnestly. “That is”—she suddenly looked toward Pilgrim—“I’ll be glad to go. I can’t answer for Mr. Pilgrim. I don’t know what his engagements are.”
“Engagements!” Pilgrim grinned. “ If I were unfortunate enough to have any hindering engagements, I would certainly cancel them. I’ll be here, Mother Gray, right on the dot. Will ten o’clock be time enough?”
“Oh, surely!” said the smiling lady. “And I’m as happy as a bird to think you are coming with me. Now, don’t hurry!” she said as the two young people arose. “Can’t you wait long enough to eat a few cookies? Philip, you used to like my cookies.”
“I sure did! They were swell!”
“And I’m just eager to taste them,” Laurel said, laughing.
A little while and they were on their way again. True, they had no other place to go, but both of them felt that they had had a reprieve. Strange, thought Laurel, that she should feel this way about a friend whom she had just picked out of the blue as it were. Of course he was all right. She remembered having seen him when he was a boy. He remembered her. She had heard of his success in college. He had demonstrated to her that he had respectable friends, and his behavior to her had been irreproachable. She had no trouble in her heart about that. Her only concern was that she should so soon have developed this great interest in him and that she should feel so unreasonably happy to think they were to have one more day together.
“Well, how do you like her?” asked Phil Pilgrim after they had driven a couple of blocks away from the little white house.
“Oh, I think she’s just wonderful. Yes, Phil, she’s all you said she was, and more. I just love her, and I’m so glad you took me there! It’s going to make a big difference in my winter to have a friend like that.”
“I thought maybe it would,” said Pilgrim slowly, thoughtfully. “It’s going to make me a lot happier about leaving you here alone.” And then suddenly he grew red and hot in the darkness. “Of course it’s none of my business,” he hurried to add. “I had no right to try and plan your life for you. With my few resources, it was presumption in me. But I thought maybe she might help you out sometime in an emergency. She did that for me more than once.”
“I see what you mean,” said Laurel gently, “and I thank you with all my heart. I’m going to take a lot of pleasure knowing her. I think she’s rare.”
They drove on into a moonlit world over some of the dear old road that both of them had known in their childhood, knitting up a friendship moment by moment that counted almost up to years before they turned and went back.
“I must get you home before it is noticeably late,” said Phil with a grin. “Your first night in that new boarding place, it wouldn’t do for you to be out too late with an unknown soldier.”
“Well, of course,” said Laurel. “If we were coming from a nightclub somewhere, nobody would think anything of it these days. But I’m glad you’re taking care of me. It is what my mother would appreciate, and I guess it will be good for my reputation as a schoolmarm, too.”
“Oh, I imagine so. But still, I don’t suppose that would count much a
s yet. But, by the way, how do you feel about that going-to-church business? Do you mind?”
“Mind? I think it’s lovely. I like it. Why? Don’t you?”
“Oh yes! I like Mrs. Gray’s way of looking at things. I never went to that place where she says she goes, but I’m sure it will be interesting. I don’t suppose it’s the church that your people attended.”
“I don’t care about that. But they must have gone to the same church when my mother was alive. Don’t you know she spoke of being in the same Ladies’ Aid and Missionary Society?”
“That’s true. But Mrs. Gray is one who would help out a new work if she thought it worthy. Still, we’ll see. The big church may have grown too worldly to please her. A good many churches seem to have got that way these days.”
“Yes, I know,” said Laurel seriously. “I haven’t been going to church much lately. Somehow the ones I chanced on didn’t seem to mean much. They were just eager about how many came and how much money they raised.”
“Yes, that’s the way they impressed me,” said Pilgrim. “I couldn’t seem to get anything out of them. Perhaps I didn’t find the right ones. But lately, since I went to camp, I’ve been going to the meetings we have there. There’s a crackerjack chaplain down there, and he seems to be real as far as I can find out. He talks about being ‘saved’ as if it is something you can be sure of. I don’t know. If all Christians were like that, I might take stock in it. Maybe I’ll have time to think it over while I’m in the army. Seems like a thing one ought to take some thought about if one is going out to possibly be shot, you know.”
“Oh, don’t talk that way,” said Laurel with a sudden shiver. “Please don’t!” She laid her hand gently on his arm for an instant.
“Why! Would you care?” he asked, looking down at her in a kind of wonder.
“Yes! Yes, of course,” she said with almost a sob. “Of course I would care. You saved my life! And you’ve been wonderful to me. Don’t spoil this lovely day by talking about being shot.”
He was very still for a moment, and then he said, “Thank you for that. I never really thought about anybody caring what would happen to me.”
And then they suddenly arrived at the boardinghouse, with lights blazing forth from over the front door and from most of the windows. Three young men were getting out of a car in front of them and marching up the walk to the steps.
Laurel suddenly looked up and recognized the shoulders of two of those young men and drew back into the car out of sight, clutching fiercely the hand that still held hers.
“Oh, do I have to go in there just yet?” she asked, annoyed. “Couldn’t we drive on for a little? I don’t want to go in there right in front of all those men.”
“Of course we’ll drive on a little farther,” said Pilgrim, a ring of satisfaction in his voice. “It’s only eleven o’clock yet. And where, by the way, did you arrange to keep your car?”
“Just around the corner there. It’s only a step. There’s a way out the back gate.”
“I see,” said Pilgrim, “that’s not so bad. Suppose we drive around a block or two and watch when their car goes away. I might get a glimpse of those men and see if I know any of them.”
“I thought I did,” said Laurel in a small voice.
“You did? Are they men you know and can trust?”
“I know them—I guess,” said Laurel. “That is, I’ve met them in the city among my cousin’s friends. But they are not my kind of people. I would rather not meet them just now, anyway. They know nothing about my life and would only laugh and jeer at my trying to earn a living. They are people who like to play a lot. They don’t take life seriously. Anyway, I’d rather not see them at present. About trusting them, I wouldn’t know. I never had to. They are pleasant enough and polite at a party. That is all I’ve seen of them. One was a war correspondent in Germany until a short time ago. His name is Winter. I’m not sure, but the other one was a writer, too. His name is Rainey.”
“I see,” said Pilgrim thoughtfully. “Now, what could we do about this? Would you rather get a room at the tearoom for tonight? Do you dislike meeting them as much as that?”
“I couldn’t,” said Laurel. “All my things are locked in my room. No, of course it’s not as important as that. I just would rather be forgotten. They don’t need to know where I am. Unless of course they are staying here for a while. Then I couldn’t very well help myself. But maybe they only dropped in to see somebody and will go on pretty soon.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “We’ll see.”
So they drove around for a little longer, too much under the spell of their recent words and the silver night to make much conversation. Perhaps, too, a little occupied with the thought of the intruding men. Phil Pilgrim was troubled that his companion of the day was planning to abide in a house that was open to strange boarders. It was no place for her to be staying.
He spoke out his thought presently.
“I know,” said Laurel. “It may not be as pleasant as I would like, but perhaps I’d better try it out. The room is very pleasant and convenient. There is an upper porch opening off it that attracted me.”
“But I don’t like to leave you in a place like that. You seem so unprotected.”
“Thank you. It’s nice to think someone cares.” She smiled. “But you see, I took the room for a week and left a deposit. I think I had better try to stay if possible and see what it’s like. Of course if those men are the ones I know, they are quite all right as far as safety is concerned. But they are just not the kind I care to choose for friends. And I imagine it would be hard to live in the close quarters of a boardinghouse without a certain degree of intimacy.”
“Rather!” said Pilgrim dryly. She had never had much experience of boardinghouses, and he had and spoke out of his wider knowledge.
“I feel,” he said with slow hesitation, “as if I were somehow responsible for you, and I don’t like to go far away and leave you in a place that I am not perfectly sure about.”
He looked down at her through the moonlight, and an answer of utter trust and confidence flashed between them.
And just then they turned again into the street of the boardinghouse and saw two of the men, the two that Laurel thought she knew, coming out of the house, while the third stood at the top of the steps and waved a hand as in farewell.
The two men who looked like Winter and Rainey came out to their car and hurriedly drove away in the direction they would take if they were returning to the city. The third man went back in, and as they pulled up before the house, they could see him mounting the stairs with his suitcase.
“Well, thank goodness, that hazard is past for the night anyway,” said Laurel. “I don’t know why I was such a silly about those two men. They were nice enough, even quite attentive, and I didn’t dislike them. I just didn’t want to have the whole mob of people I left behind me find out where I am and come howling after me every time they have a party or anything. I don’t want to live their kind of life, and they can make it mighty uncomfortable for me if they find out where I am right now at the beginning, especially if they go back and get Cousin Carolyn started after me. But I suppose that is foolish. If I take and stick to it they’ll soon learn.”
“I understand,” said Pilgrim with a soft little touch of reassurance on the hand that lay next to him on the seat.
“Thank you,” said the girl happily. “I sort of knew you would. And now, shall we put the car in the garage? I have the key of my cubby hole here. And then I can slip in the side door of the house.”
He put the car away for her and walked with her to the side door.
“Suppose you meet me in front of the tearoom at nine thirty in the morning. Will that be too early?” he said quietly.
“That will be quite all right for me,” she answered in a whisper, “and thanks for everything—all day!”
He grasped her hand, giving it a quick little squeeze, and then he brought it swiftly up to his lips and laid them reverentl
y upon it. “Good night,” he said and opened the door for her, disappearing quickly into the shadows of the path.
Laurel went hurriedly into the office and asked for her key from the sleepy clerk who was lolling in a big chair with a movie magazine. She was thankful that there was no one else in the office. She accomplished the distance to her own room without meeting anyone and was glad when the door was locked between herself and the world, and she could sit down for a minute and take in the thought of those lips upon her hand. What had come over her that a thing like that should produce such a tumult inside her? She had had her hand kissed before, but not like this. Not with such reverence, such tenderness! There was a quality to that caress that went deep into her soul, stirred her almost to tears, as if she had unexpectedly found something great and dependable. Somehow the experiences of yesterday and today had changed her outlook on life, and it would never be the same again.
Chapter 11
Sunday morning when Laurel awoke, she found her room flooded with sunshine. It was really a very pleasant room. Two windows looked toward Crimson Mountain, its glorious blending of color plainly visible. After all, perhaps this was as good a boarding place as she could find.
The breakfast was fairly good, though Laurel was not critical this particular morning. She was full of the anticipation of the day, her mind dwelling on little things that had been said and done the day before. That reverent kiss on her fingers, nothing silly about it the way so many people of the world fooled around with kissing. It was almost an homage done her, and it stirred her even in memory more than she had yet owned to herself. This was the most interesting young man she had ever yet met. Were there others like him? He seemed so different. Oh, perhaps she was just silly and would snap out of it pretty soon, but she was enjoying it all and didn’t want to miss a single minute of this lovely day that was before her.
She had the dining room almost to herself, for the other boarders, if any, had not chosen to arise so early. There was just one young man over at the table in the corner, eating stolidly with downcast eyes. He was thickset, low-browed, and broad-shouldered, with large hands, blunt fingers, and small, sharp eyes boring into her, as if he were trying to pierce through her personality, but as she turned away, his eyes seemed to fade out like a moving picture, as if they had not been lifted at all. Yet she knew they had. It was uncanny. She had a distinct photographic vision on her own retina of how those eyes had looked, like ruthless gimlets boring into her life and examining it. She didn’t like it. It was weird. She felt as if he had torn away all reserve in herself, examined every cranny of her soul, and would be able now to understand everything she did. Oh, she didn’t want to be near him! Maybe it was silly, but definitely, if he was going to be a regular boarder here, she would find some other place. And she would do it so unobtrusively that he would never find out where she was gone, if that was possible.