The Beloved Stranger - By Grace Livingston Hill Page 0,29
tinge of bitterness in her voice. “But never mind. It’s over now, and I hope a good happy life for you has begun. Try not to think much about the past. Try to make yours a happy marriage if it can be done.”
They passed on together down the hall to the head of the stairs where Carter McArthur and his best man stood waiting, and as she saw her bridegroom standing there so handsome and smiling and altogether just what a happy bridegroom ought to look like, there came to Arla new strength. She lost her sorrowful humility and became the radiant bride again. That was her husband standing there waiting for her! Her husband, not another girl’s! Only a short walk down the stairs now, a dash to the car, and she would be out and free from all this awfulness, and into a new life. She might be going into hell, but she was going with him, and it was what she had chosen.
Then suddenly, as Arla’s hand was drawn within the arm of her bridegroom and they walked smilingly down the stairs with measured tread, Sherrill, falling in behind, felt greatly alone and lost. A sinking feeling came over her. Was she going to fall? That would be dreadful, now when it was almost over. Must she walk down those steps alone? Couldn’t she just slip back to her room and stay there till they were all gone?
But just as she faltered at the top step, she felt a hand under her arm, and a pleasant voice said in her ear: “Well, is it all over now but the shouting?” and she looked up to see the cheerful grin of Copeland.
She had forgotten his existence in the last few tense minutes, but he had been waiting, had seen her weakness, and was there just at the right moment.
“Did anybody ever before pick up a friend like you right out of the street in the dark night?” she asked suddenly, lifting grateful eyes to his face.
“Why, I thought it was I who picked you up!” he answered quickly with a warm smile.
“Well, anyway, you have been wonderful!”
“I’m only too glad if I have been able to live up to the specifications,” he said earnestly and finished with his delightful grin again.
The people down in the hall looking up said to one another: “Look at those two! They look as if it were their wedding, don’t they? Who is he, do you suppose, and where has he been all this time?”
Sherrill stood with the rest on the wide front veranda watching the bride and groom dash across to their beribboned car, which awaited them. She even threw a few of the pink rose petals with which the guests were hilariously pelting the bridal couple. Even now at this last moment, when she was watching another girl go away with her bridegroom, she must smile and keep up appearances, although her knees felt weak and the tears were dangerously near.
Mrs. Battersea had stationed herself and her lorgnette in the forefront, and she fixed her eagle eye especially on Sherrill. If there was still any more light on the peculiar happening of the evening to be gleaned from a view of the original bride off her guard, at this last minute, she meant to get it.
Sherrill suddenly saw her, and it had the effect of making her give a little hysterical giggle. Then Copeland’s hand on her arm steadied her again, and she flashed a grateful smile up to meet his pleasant grin.
Mrs. Battersea dropped her lorgnette, deciding that of course this was the other lover appeared just at the last minute; only how did they get that other girl?
They were all gone at last. The last guest had joked to Aunt Pat about her wonderful surprise wedding; the last bridesmaid had taken her little box of wedding cake to sleep on and stolen noisily away. Just Aunt Pat and Sherrill and Copeland left standing alone in the wide front hall as the last car whirled away.
Copeland had stayed to the end, as if he were a part of the household, stayed close by Sherrill, taken the burden of the last conversations upon himself as if he had the right, made every second of those last trying minutes just as easy for her as possible, kept up a light patter of brilliant conversation, filling in all the spots that needed tiding over.