Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer Part 9

David vowed within himself to leave no stone unturned which might be the means of restoring to her the happiness which she so richly merited.

The visit to Mrs. Gray proved a severe trial to both young people. Her usual optimistic viewpoint had long since deserted her, leaving her a wan little ghost of the vivacious Fairy G.o.dmother who had once entered so merrily into the doings of her Christmas children. A fixed air of melancholy had dropped down on her which even David's hearty a.s.surances that Tom would soon be found failed to lift.

"If any one can find Tom it will be you, David," was the nearest approach toward hopefulness which she could muster.

"I'll find him, never fear," predicted David with an air of cheerful certainty that brought faint smiles to both women's somber faces. "I must leave you soon, though, in order to make that late train for New York. Before I go, I'll devise a secret code so that I can telegraph you here at Oakdale if anything good comes to pa.s.s."

Grace supplying him with pencil and paper, David jotted down several sentences which he was most likely to need in sending messages, then subst.i.tuted different words to be used in place of the originals. This bit of thoughtfulness on his part was eminently cheering, and when soon afterward he took hasty leave of Grace and Mrs. Gray the latter appeared to be in a less lugubrious frame of mind.

After he had gone, Grace followed Mrs. Gray into the library, the old lady's favorite room in the big house, and, drawing a chair opposite to that of her near-aunt, began rather hesitatingly, "Now that David has left us, there are several things, dear Fairy G.o.dmother, that I must say to you. They are mainly about--our wedding day. Only the Eight Originals and a few of the 'Sempers' know that the time was actually set for the tenth of September. They are all intimate friends, tried and true. I think it is only right that I should explain matters to them. Not one of them would break a confidence.

"If I am not married to Tom on the tenth, naturally they will wonder. It would be dreadful for me to have to say to any one of them, 'I can't explain why the wedding must be postponed.' They love me and I love them. We've always shared our joys and sorrows. It doesn't seem fair to leave them in the dark. Naturally it will hurt me a great deal to explain, but it will hurt me far more not to. I have talked with Mother and Father about it. They both feel that the decision must rest with you. It's too bad to bother you with this new perplexity, but I must know one way or the other. I can't endure the suspense."

At the beginning of Grace's earnest plea that her closest friends be put into possession of the knowledge that Tom Gray was among the missing, his aunt's delicate face showed unmistakable signs of disapproval. Swept along by the girl's fervent earnest words, Mrs. Gray felt her brief abhorrence of the idea vanish in an overwhelming flood of admiration for the dauntless spirit in which Grace bore the torturing dread that had been thrust upon her.

"You make me feel ashamed of myself, Grace," she faltered. "While I've been nursing my own selfish grief you have been putting aside your sorrow to think of others. After all, you have more at stake than I. My life has been practically lived, while yours is only at its dawn. I have known the bitterness of losing those I loved. It should have taught me to face the future more courageously. When you spoke just now of letting others know of our trouble, it seemed for a moment as though I could never consent to it. But I have changed my mind. It would not be fair either to you or my poor boy, wherever he may be, to place you in a false position. I have only one stipulation. Wait a little longer before telling your friends of this dreadful disruption of our plans. If within the next three days we have not heard from Mr. Blaisdell, the investigator, then write to your friends and let them know the exact circ.u.mstances."

"It breaks my heart to hear you say such things of yourself," was Grace's pa.s.sionate cry. Springing to her feet she knelt before the older woman and wrapped two shielding arms about her. "You've always thought of others. I won't let you say that you are selfish, or that your life has been almost lived. You've been as brave as a lion ever since this terrible trouble came to us. You have just as much at stake as I. We must stand together, even more firmly than before, waiting and hoping that all will be well. Before Tom went away he often said that he hoped our life together would always be one long Golden Summer. I'm not going to let winter overtake me now when my Golden Summer's hardly begun. This is just a brief cloud that hides the sun. It will pa.s.s and we'll all be happy together again. Just because our plans have all gone awry is no sign that they always will. Postponing our wedding day doesn't mean saying good-bye to happiness. It's only a brief postponement of happiness, too."

CHAPTER XII

THE BETTER PART

Although Grace had so st.u.r.dily a.s.serted her claim on happiness, nevertheless she quailed secretly before the ordeal of writing to her friends regarding the change in her plans. Long she pondered before committing the gloomy information to paper. More than one anguished tear fell from her eyes as she relentlessly pursued her difficult task. Not so very long ago she had fondly dreamed of the time when she should happily send to those she loved the summons to come to her on her wedding day. But the pile of envelopes which eventually found their way to the nearest mail-box contained news of a vastly different character.

True to her promise she had conscientiously waited for the word from Mr.

Blaisdell which Mrs. Gray had antic.i.p.ated. At the end of three days of suspense she had sought her Fairy G.o.dmother only to meet with a letter from the investigator which sent hope to the winds. In it he stated that aside from the station master at the lonely little railway station, he had encountered no one who recalled seeing a young man of the description of Tom Gray. He had learned from the former that Tom had halted him to inquire the way to the camp and to ascertain if he could obtain any means of conveyance on that day. As it was then four o'clock in the afternoon and no one from the camp had met the train, the station master had warned him that a storm was coming and advised him to wait over until the following morning, offering Tom the hospitality of his own home. The young man had politely declined his offer, saying that he must reach the camp that night and would walk. He had said good-bye and swung off toward the dense growth of forest that rose behind the straggling hamlet, and nothing further had been seen or heard of him.

Further inquiry at the camp, which Mr. Blaisdell had experienced considerable difficulty in reaching, had developed the alarming news that no such person as Tom Gray had been seen in that vicinity. He had gleaned, however, that the station master's prediction of bad weather had been verified and that a particularly heavy windstorm had swept that region early in the evening of the day on which he had talked with the young man. Torrents of rain had fallen and trees had been broken down and uprooted. It was possible that Tom had lost his way and been killed by a falling tree. Blaisdell did not believe this, however, as neither a dead nor injured man had been found by the various search parties of lumber men who had been sent out to cover the surrounding territory. So far as possible the search had been conducted with the utmost secrecy.

He had not divulged Tom's name. As the camp was in an out of the way place, peopled by a taciturn set of men who asked few questions, it was not likely that any news would travel farther than its limits.

The day following the receipt of this letter brought a telegraphic notification from David Nesbit to the effect that he had reached the lumber camp and was about to start on his search for his chum. With this small consolation, the patient, tortured souls who awaited news of their lost one were forced to be content.

Hard as it had been to write to her trusty comrades, it was infinitely harder for Grace to receive the messages of sympathy and love which poured in upon her. Yet on the heels of her distress came one letter which, despite the gravity of her present situation, moved Grace to half-hearted laughter. On opening an envelope addressed to herself in Arline Thayer's unmistakable script, Grace was mildly astonished to read:

"DEAR STANLEY:

"After our talk last evening I am quite certain that I could never be happy as your wife. It has shown me clearly that our aims and viewpoints are so entirely different that it would be useless even to dream of spending the remainder of our lives together. It is hard to write this, but I feel that no matter what it may cost me I must be true to myself. I am therefore returning your ring and letters by express. You may do as you think best in regard to returning the letters I have written you.

"With a sincere wish for your future happiness,

"Yours sincerely,

"ARLINE THAYER."

Tardily realizing that she had unwittingly perused a communication not intended for her eyes, Grace lost no time in writing an apologetic letter to Arline in which she enclosed the fateful missive of rejection.

How Arline had come to mail it to her was a matter for speculation.

But she had only set eyes on the beginning of a drama as she was soon destined to learn. Late the next afternoon, while seated on the front veranda with her mother, she viewed with mingled emotions a taxicab which had come to a full stop before the house. Out of it stepped a small, golden-haired young woman whose smart pongee traveling coat and bulging leather bag proclaimed that she had come from afar.

"Arline Thayer!" cried Grace, running down the steps to meet the newcomer as she pa.s.sed through the gateway. "Why, Daffydowndilly! This _is_ a surprise! You are the last person I had dreamed of seeing." Grace caught the dainty little girl in a warm embrace.

"I know I should have telegraphed you," apologized Arline, "but--well--I didn't. I made up my mind all in an instant to come to you, and here I am. Ever since I received your letter you've been constantly in my thoughts. I replied at once. Of course you received it?"

"Let me take your luggage, Daffydowndilly." Grace evaded Arline's implied interrogation for the moment. "Come and pay your respects to Mother, then we'll go upstairs to your room and you can rest a little before dinner. You must be very tired after your long ride. Then, too, we can exchange confidences. I have something to say to you about the letter you just mentioned." Grace could not refrain from smiling a little. She suspected that Arline had made a mistake, the precise result of which was yet to be revealed.

"What is the matter, Grace?" was Arline's quick question. She had instantly detected the unusual in her friend's enigmatic smile and evasive speech.

Their progress to the veranda, where Mrs. Harlowe waited to greet the unexpected but heartily-welcome arrival, prevented Grace's reply. It was not until Arline had been ushered into one of the large, airy upper chambers which Grace took so much pleasure in reserving for the use of her frequent guests, that the former again repeated her question in tones of deepening anxiety.

"I will tell you when you have made yourself comfortable," stipulated Grace. a.s.sisting Arline in removing her hat and coat, she applied herself a.s.siduously to the comfort of her friend.

"You are a truly ideal hostess, Grace," was Arline's tribute as she finally settled herself in a deep willow chair. "Now I am ready to hear what you have been keeping from me."

"You asked me if I had received your letter," began Grace as she dropped into a nearby chair. "Yesterday morning I _did_ receive a letter you wrote, but it was not for me. The envelope was addressed to me, but the letter--I read it before I realized that I hadn't that right--was written to Mr. Stanley Forde. I wrote you an apology, enclosed the other letter with it and mailed them to you."

"Oh!" Arline gave a horrified gasp. "How perfectly dreadful! How in the world did I happen to make such a mistake! This is awful!"

"Then you wrote to me at the same time and confused the two letters? I was afraid of that. But it doesn't matter to me if it doesn't to you."

Grace tried to put on an air of kindly unconcern. Secretly it saddened her a trifle to know that a stranger had received even an inkling of her private affairs. Undoubtedly Arline's letter to herself had contained an expression of sympathy which could not fail to put Mr. Stanley Forde in possession of certain painful facts relating to her own trouble.

"But it matters a great deal!" exclaimed Arline, flushing deeply. "In that letter to you I said that I could never be thankful enough that I had had such a wonderful talk with you. I said, too, that you had made me see things in a different light and that I knew now that what I had believed was love wasn't love at all. Worse still, I said that if it had not been for you I would never have had the courage to break my engagement, but would have failed to be true to myself. Now, Stanley has that letter!" Arline made a despairing gesture. "I don't care what he thinks about _me_, but what will he think about _you_?"

Grace was not prepared to answer this pertinent question from the jilted Stanley's viewpoint. Personally she had a disagreeably clear idea of what he was quite likely to think. Yet she was too st.u.r.dily honest by nature to regret the advice she had given Arline in good faith. "I am sorry this has happened," she returned slowly, "but I am not sorry for what I said to you. I meant it. I would have said as much to Mr. Forde had an occasion risen which demanded plain speaking."

"You are Loyalheart, through and through," came impulsively from Arline.

"You would stand by your colors to the death. I couldn't blame you if you were terribly angry with me for mixing you up so miserably in my affairs. I should have been more careful, but I was dreadfully upset when I wrote those letters. You see, Stanley came to my home on the evening of the day he returned from Oregon. As you know, I had decided to have a plain talk with him. It began pleasantly enough, but before it ended we were both very angry. He declared point-blank that after we were married I would positively _have_ to give up my settlement work. He said a great many hateful, sneering things about the poor people I've been trying to help. I was going to give him back his ring then, but I remembered what you advised about not being too hasty. So I told him I wouldn't discuss the subject with him any more that evening.

"After that he was very pleasant. I suppose he thought he had won me over to his point of view. When he had gone I sat for a long time on the veranda thinking hard. Then I went upstairs to my room and wrote him, breaking our engagement. Of course I cried a little. I was so unhappy.

Then I thought of you and felt like writing you about it. After I had written both letters, I read them over; first the one to him, then yours. It was after midnight and I was so tired. I suppose that is how I happened to make the mistake of putting your address on his letter and vice versa. He will be simply furious. I only hope that he doesn't write you a hateful letter. If he writes to me, I'll send the letter back unopened. You'd better do the same."

"No; I couldn't do that. It is perfectly proper for you to do so, but it would appear cowardly on my part. Let us hope he doesn't bother to write me. Does he know my surname and where I live?"

"Yes; I've told him of you a great many times. I wish now that I hadn't.

I am sure he will write you. It's a shame. I came to Oakdale to comfort you and be comforted. Now I've landed both of us in a nice muddle."

Arline lifted a pair of mournful blue eyes to Grace.

In the presence of impending tragedy a sudden sense of the ridiculous swept the two girls. Their eyes meeting, they began to laugh. It was the first genuine mirth that had stirred Grace Harlowe since the day on which she had left the Briggs' cottage to return to Oakdale.

"One ought not laugh over such a serious matter," apologized Arline, with a half hysterical chuckle. "But I can't help thinking how surprised you must have been to receive that letter to Stanley, and how wrathful he must be by this time."

"I'd rather laugh over it than cry," smiled Grace. "Don't worry, Daffydowndilly. I'm not afraid of any letter that Mr. Stanley Forde may choose to send me. You had better write him another letter at once, though, and explain matters. You owe him that, at least."

"I will," sighed Arline. "There's just one thing more I have to say. I shall _never, never_ fall in love again. It's fatal to one's peace of mind. Now that I've fallen out of love, I feel about a hundred years younger. I'm going to be a nice, kind, spinster and found a home for poor children."