"I am. I will be!" said the father, lifting his head with a sudden smile.
"That's the talk. Here comes Maris. Now, smile again. Turn on the works, quick!"
Mr. Mayberry met his daughter with a smile that was almost blinding as she came down with a check in her hand.
"I'm just so happy I had it, Father," she whispered as she put her arms around his neck and kissed him, and he held her close for a moment.
"You precious child!" he said. "It is wonderful of you to do this. Of course, I didn't mean anybody to find out I was in a tight place, but this has lifted a great burden from me. Wait till I tell your mother about it. Just as soon as she is able to hear it."
"Don't be in too big a hurry, Daddy," warned Maris. "Let her forget for a while that there are burdens. But we're going to make it our business to see that the burdens don't get heavy again, Father. Now, if you want to do something for us, you will go in and drink that nice cold milk and egg that Sally has just made for you, and then you'll go and lie down and sleep a little while before lunch."
When Father had obediently gone smiling in to follow her orders, Maris turned to Merrick.
"Merrick, will you have time to step down to the stationer's office and pay that bill before Father sees it? Here's a blank check, and you can fill it in. Here's what I think it is, but there may be something extra I've forgotten. I'd like to get that bill paid before Father ever sees it."
Merrick flashed her a look.
"I certainly am proud of my sister!" he said. "It's the greatest thing I ever knew a girl to do, right on the edge of her wedding day, too!"
A startled look came over Maris's face and she almost opened her lips to explain, but then she held them tight. Somehow she felt as if she mustn't tell yet that there was to be no wedding. It seemed as if she must tell this first to her mother and father before she broadcast it to the family. She struggled with a sudden desire to hug her brother who all at once seemed so grown up and dependable, but she knew it would embarrass him, so she only smiled.
"It's only what you would have done yourself, you old fraud," she said tenderly.
"Never having been a girl before her wedding, I don't know, but I'm sure I'd like to have the money to try," he said. "Wait till I get to working! You'll see!"
"Of course I will. Now, get away to the city and get that note paid. Have you got Father's bankbook and all the data? And say, Merrick, do you think there are any other notes or things?"
"No, I guess not, but I'll find out. He told me there would be a big caterer's bill and a florist bill, and cars for the wedding and----"
"Yes? Well, we won't worry about those just now," said Maris, "but if there's anything else he ought to pay, please let me know."
"I should say it was my job if there's anything else."
"Well, you haven't got a legacy just now, Merrick."
"No, but I've got an expensive set of golf clubs, two tennis rackets, and a canoe up at college I think I could sell. Watch me! I'll go my share, too. So long! I'll be back in time for dinner. Tell Dad not to worry if I'm late." And Merrick hurried away in the sunshine.
Maris watched him a minute, her heart lighter than it had been for several days. What a dear boy he was anyway! What a precious family she had, and suddenly her heart thrilled with gladness that it was her right and privilege to watch over them and help them now without anyone to hinder or tell her no.
She would have to explain Tilford's absence pretty soon of course, but not until she had got used to things herself and adjusted her life to its new order.
Then she turned and sped upstairs to her patient, who about this time would be demanding some amusement.
But the wedding invitations were still hidden in the attic.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The rest of that day was very full. It seemed there was no time to do the things she wanted very much to do at once. Lexie was hard to please. She was hot and restless and wanted her mother. She wanted to have the window shades up and be given a picture book, both of which were against the doctor's orders, for her eyes must be guarded carefully.
Maris did her best to make the child happy, meantime letting her own thoughts run ahead with plans. But it was not until almost eight o'clock in the evening that the little patient was finally asleep and Maris was free to do what she would.
She slipped into her mother's room for a minute and saw her father lying on the cot, sleeping with a look of real rest on his face, and her heart was glad that she had been able to relieve him from at least one of his heavy burdens.
Quietly she slipped up to the attic and brought out the wedding invitations. She had a feeling somehow that she was committing burglary.
She had planned to burn them out in the incinerator, but when she touched their smooth, thick surfaces, the double envelopes making such bulky, firm white slabs, she realized that things like that wouldn't burn very easily. She would have to pull them out of their envelopes and burn them one by one. It wouldn't do to leave any traces of them about for Sally to wonder over and perhaps gossip about in the village.
Looking about her, she saw a large box of wood shavings that had come around the only wedding present she had as yet received. It was a great ugly, old-fashioned lamp sent to her by an old friend of the family, now in her nineties, who had moved out west some twenty years ago, when Maris was a baby. It was a hideous thing. The old lady had written that she had heard the Mayberrys' oldest girl was going to be married pretty soon, so she thought she would send her a present. It was a lamp that had been given to her as a wedding present, and she thought Maris might like to have it because it was so old.
It was an oil lamp with a terrible glass shade on which a floral decoration had been poorly painted. Maris had looked at it in despair and written a nice little note of thanks and then hastily gathered up its parts and dumped the whole thing in the attic out of the way, for it came to her that it would never do to let Tilford see that lamp!
So here it was beside her as she turned to go down with her boxes of invitations, an ugly old lamp lying in a great lot of shavings. Just the thing to start the thick envelopes burning.
Quickly she removed the lamp and took the box down with her. Soon those carefully addressed invitations were roaring up in smoke into the summer night, licked by crackling flames. The notable names of the town's Four Hundred stood out boldly in Maris's clear handwriting for an instant and then were crumbled into black parchment.
Maris stood there and watched them burn, fascinated by the thought that her hopes of yesterday, and all she had built up for what she had thought would be happiness, were so quickly destroyed. An expensive little fire, but how much it meant! How quickly God had showed her when He got ready to act. It filled her with a kind of awe. Was God watching all her acts and plans that way? Did He watch everybody so and take account of what was best for them? Was God as personal as that?
She lifted her eyes to the clear sky above, set with many stars. God taking account of her. God arranging things to make her see her mistakes before it was too late!
But yet, she had her own free choice. Suppose she had yielded to Tilford and gone on? Would God have let her have her way and bear the consequences? That was something to think about when she had time. She gave a little shiver there in the darkness when she remembered Tilford's face as he talked to her that morning. What would it be like to be under the authority of a man who did not care for her dear ones? From whom even death could bring no sympathetic word?
She was poking among the ashes, lifting an envelope here and there that was sliding out of the way of the flame and keeping its identity in spite of the fire, when she heard Gwyneth coming through the kitchen. She had left Gwyneth studying hard in the library. Why didn't she stay there? She didn't want Gwyneth to see her holocaust. Gwyneth wouldn't understand and might be horrified. She didn't want to have to explain, not yet. Not while trouble was in the house. Not while Mother lay so ill.
She turned swiftly and met Gwyneth as sh
e opened the kitchen door.
"Oh, here you are!" said the little girl. "Someone wants you on the phone. I think it's the doctor, but I'm not sure."
With sudden fear clutching at her heart, Maris left her fire and hurried in, yet even as she went reason returned. If it was the doctor, it would only be some direction about her nursing. Nothing terrible could come from the doctor when he wasn't at the house. So, more composedly, she went to answer the call. And then it was only a salesperson for a remedy for seasickness. He said he had heard she was going to take a sea trip for her honeymoon and he wanted to recommend this marvelous remedy. Might he stop by and tell her more about it? He had a list of notable people who had used it with great success.
Maris cut him off abruptly with the information that she had no need for any such remedy and, half vexed with a world that was continually meddling in other people's business, went back to her burning.
The fire had died down, and all the white corners seemed to be gone. Just to be sure, however, she put in the last of the shavings with the box that had contained them, and the flames leaped up again in great shape and took every vestige of telltale white paper with them. Maris turned away with a sigh of relief. Those invitations could no more make trouble. They did not exist. It had all been a bad dream, those last days of frantically making out lists and addressing envelopes, of having Tilford telephone that some mistakes had been made in addresses and he had another list, or having her father hover near worrying lest some old friend was being left out or lest the plain little church they attended would not hold all these high-and-mighty guests. That was over. Purged by fire!
She turned a last look at the now dying fire and cast upon it in her thoughts the memory of that pretty wedding procession--the white trailing veil, the rainbow-tinted bridesmaids, her two little sisters, Lexie as flower girl and Gwyneth in her first long dress as maid of honor. All that pretty dream was gone now. She probably would never marry. Though if she did, the dress that Mother made would of course be used, no matter if she married royalty--which of course she wouldn't, having just turned down the nearest approach to anything like wealth and influence that would likely ever cross her path.
Nevertheless, it was with a light heart that she locked the kitchen door and went upstairs. She felt easier in her mind than she had since she had caught that glimpse of the dear shabby old house and sensed the contemptuous scorn in Tilford's tone as he voiced the sentiment that he was not expecting her to have any further connection with it after she was married.
There was one more thing she meant to do tonight before she slept. She must make one more visit to the attic. She wanted to put that precious wedding dress away out of sight, where nothing could happen to it and where no alien eyes could possibly search it out and bring it into criticism. If anything happened to Mother--or if it didn't--that dress would always be her most prized possession.
There was a great white cardboard box lined with satin paper. It had held a pair of lovely white pure wool blankets, the softest, finest blankets that could be found, with wide satin bindings. They were the last things that Mother had bought for her, and she treasured them greatly. They were over Mother now, tucked softly about her quiet form, covered scrupulously with an enshrouding sheet by the careful nurse so that no harm could come to them. Maris was so glad that Mother had them about her. It comforted her to have them there. The dear blankets that Mother had bought. Precious Mother who so seldom bought anything pretty or fine for herself.
And now that beautiful, strong box would be the very thing in which to put away her wedding dress.
She carried the dress to her own room and closed the door between it and the playroom where Lexie was; she folded the exquisite dress, breath by breath, with its perfect needlework and beautiful lace puffed out by tissue paper till not a fold nor crease was possible.
She looked at it there in the box as it lay, with a little spray of orange blossoms they had bought that last day of shopping together nestled at the throat. It looked so like a lovely personality that had been sinned against, that dress. As if it were glad to be folded away and at rest.
A bright tear sprang into Maris's eye, and she closed the box quietly and tied it up. There must be no tears shed on that dress. Only smiles should greet it if it ever came out again.
She stood on a chair and put the box on the highest shelf of her roomy closet, far back where no one would ever be likely to notice it.
Then Maris went with a swift, soft tread back and forth a few times to bring the lovely dresses that had been prepared for her trousseau. There were not a great many of them, but each one was charming of its kind, and Maris had been pleased with them. But now they must go into seclusion. No one wanted to see the trousseau of a poor dead wedding hanging around. Besides, another nurse was coming now in a few minutes, a night nurse to relieve the first nurse, so that Mother would not be alone a minute. She must hurry and make room for more stiff uniforms. There were a few things still hanging in the other guest room where Father was sleeping at night now. She must get those out of the way before the nurse roused him and sent him to bed in earnest.
So, almost ruthlessly, those garments that had been bought so carefully, one at a time, and admired as each a prize in itself were gathered into a heap on her arm and dumped unceremoniously on her bed to get the other closets empty before anyone discovered what she was doing. She locked her door while she was hurtling them into her own closet, which suddenly seemed to lose its spaciousness as the grand garments were ushered in.
But at least they were all hung up, with a garment bag guarding the entrance. In the morning she would find time to slip them into bags, or under covers, and then later if Mother got well and everything was all right and normal again, she would bring them forth casually one by one as if she had always worn them, and nobody would remember that they had been wedding clothes.
Just then she heard Merrick drive up in Lane Maitland's car. The new nurse had arrived and she must go down and meet her.
But while Maris was showing the new nurse her way about and helping to get her father settled for the night, Gwyneth had hopped into the car beside Merrick and was riding around to the Maitland garage with him.
"I gotta go with you because I gotta ask you something," she declared when he protested that she ought to be in bed.
"Listen, Merrick, isn't our Maris going to get married after all? Because the phone rang and someone wanted her, and I smelled paper burning, so I went out into the kitchen and she was outside at the incinerator burning a whole lot of things, a big bonfire, and it flickered down and almost went out just as I got there. And so I went out to see if it was all safe while she went to the telephone, and I found down in the corner against the stone, just beginning to scorch around the edge, one of her wedding invitations! It was addressed to Tilford's aunt up at Coral Crest, so I knew it was an invitation, and anyway I pulled it out and took out the invitation and saw what it was."
"Oh, that was likely some that got spoiled in the addressing," said the brother lightly. "You've just got one of your spells of romancing. You ought to be in bed."
"No, but truly, Merrick, it was, and there were a lot more little black squares down in the incinerator. I lit a match and looked."
"All right, have it your own way. You'd better get a detective and find out. I don't know anything about it," said Merrick crossly.
"Oh, but don't you wish it was true, Merrie? Don't you wish she wouldn't get married?"
"Oh sure! Anything you want. I wish the sky would rain roses and the grass would grow gold dollars. Now, scram and get to bed before I spank you!"
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tilford Thorpe went home to his mother and told her he was done with women. He didn't intend to marry ever, and he wanted it thoroughly understood that she needn't fling any of her stupid million-heiresses at him. He told her Maris was a liar, she had broken her word, and she had been stubborn and mulish about foolish things. And in the same breath he informed her th
at it was all her fault. That she had tried to force a silly dress on a girl who had too much pride to take advice and she had broken his heart, and he would never be happy again. He prattled of suicide and said it would serve his mother right, that she was always trying to manage his life for him and he hadn't a chance in the world to be himself, and a lot of like phrases, until she wept bitterly and wished she had never been born. And when he had exhausted his hurt pride upon her in curses and refused every kind of an offer to help she could think of, telling her if she had kept her everlasting tongue out of the whole matter he would still be happy and soon married and off to Europe, he told her he was going off to get drunk and she needn't try to find him, either. He was his own master and he wouldn't be bound by her any longer.
When she suggested that he take the ring back to Maris and tell her he would let her put off the wedding until her mother was better, he raved and fairly bit the air and slammed away to haunts known only to himself and his fellow club members. He remained away for three days, getting drunk. Thoroughly. Playing poker for high stakes and losing heavily.
He arrived home at last having run down an old woman carrying home a basket of groceries, and having got himself arrested and bailed out again, and came in looking like a wreck.
"Oh, Tilly dear! Where have you been?" wailed his mother as he entered her bedroom where she had been more or less in her bed, except for a social engagement or two, ever since her encounter with Dr. MacPherson.
"Now don't begin that song and dance!" said the youth insolently. "I've been where I've pleased to be; that's where you are, too, isn't it? I came up here to see if you had any more light on the matter that concerns me most. Has Maris telephoned? I understood you to say that a little silent treatment might bring her around. Has she come?"
"I haven't seen her," said his mother sadly. "No, she hasn't telephoned. I'm afraid you're going to find that your girl is an utter failure in every way. It is as I told you in the first place, Tilly; it is never wise to go out of your own class when you really settle down seriously to get married. And really, my dear, even if she had come, I should not have received her. Not after the treatment I received in her home. They are an utterly worthless lot, my dear, and you are well rid of her!"