The Flower Brides

by Grace Livingston Hill

  His refusal to come to her when she pled with him, or to have any discussion with her before it was forever too late, was still strong in her mind. It had cut her to the heart.

  So she wrote her few lines to the postmaster at home and then, because the postbox was only a block and a half down the street, she went out and mailed it. It would get there in the morning, and perhaps by tomorrow night she would have some mail. It would be more like living to be getting something of her own, even if it was nothing she cared about.

  Out in the street, with its dismal half-lit shadows, she almost regretted going out but quickened her steps to a run, deposited her letter, and flew back to safety. She did not notice a lank, awkward young man slouching against a closed grocery doorway across the corner. She did not see him look up and peer across at her, nor know that he had followed her noiselessly on the other side of the street, keeping in the shadows and hiding in a deep doorway until he saw where she went in, and that later he walked by on her side of the street and studied the house, taking note of the number before he melted into darkness again and went on his unknown way.

  Diana went upstairs, locked herself into her haven, and went to bed. But before she slept, she tried to pray.

  “Oh, God, if You really care and have helped me today, I thank You!” she said softly into her pillow. “Oh, God, if You really do care, I would be so glad!”

  Chapter 15

  Diana worked in the publishing office for nearly a week, and then one morning the manager came to her just as she had begun her work for the day and asked her if she could run a typewriter. Diana looked dismayed and told her no.

  “I’m sorry,” said the manager. “I hoped you could. This work you have been doing is about finished. It won’t last longer than today. I thought if you were a typist we could use you right along, for one of our girls is getting married next week.”

  “I could learn,” said Diana, with a desperate look in her eyes.

  The manager shook her head.

  “We need experienced typists, you know,” she said. “But if you will leave your address, we’ll promise to send for you whenever we have any extra work that we think you could do. The editor was very much pleased with the way you took hold of things. I’m sorry,” she said again with a pitying smile as she walked away.

  Diana sat and worked all day, her heart as heavy as lead. She did not go out to lunch as she had been in the habit of doing. She said she had a headache when one of the girls asked her to go with her. In reality, she was frightened. She wouldn’t waste even fifteen cents to buy lunch. The money she would get tonight would not be enough to carry her many days, and here she was plunged back into the blackness of despair again, with visions of that awful restaurant in her mind. Perhaps she would have to get a job like that yet. Perhaps she wouldn’t even be able to get one like that now, for likely that was gone long ago.

  She received her pay envelope and the kind words of the manager that night with as brave a look as she could summon, but her feet dragged heavily as she went on her way home, and instead of stopping to get a good dinner, she bought bread and cheese and went on to her room. Why waste money on a dinner that she could not eat? Oh, why did she have to go on living? Where was the God in whom she had been trying to trust? Had He forgotten her? No one cared anymore. Her father seemed to be making no further move to try to find her. Helen doubtless had told him that she would come home when she got good and tired of wandering around without money, and likely he had believed her. Oh, God, God, God, do You care at all? How could You care? I’m just nobody!

  The tears were in her eyes as she rounded the corner to the dismal rooming house, and all her life looked drab and dreary before her. Would there ever be anything ahead to make her feel happy again?

  But as she came to the steps of the house, she saw that the door stood open and a postal delivery car was at the door.

  “Here she comes!” said the landlady grimly. “Let her sign it herself. I’ve got too much to do to bother. I smell my dinner burning!”

  Diana stared at the landlady and then at the postal delivery, and then she saw a large parcel lying on the hall chair. In the dim light permitted in that dismal place, she could not read the name clearly, but the boy was holding out a card and pencil to her.

  “Sign here,” he said, and he thrust the pencil into her hand.

  Diana, filled with wonder, signed her name, and the boy vanished. Then she turned to take up her parcel and came face-to-face with her landlady again.

  “That’s from a florist’s, isn’t it?” she asked belligerently.

  Diana gazed at her, astonished.

  “I don’t know what it is,” she replied. “I haven’t opened it yet. I wasn’t expecting anything.”

  “Well, if you’re getting that many flowers in your position, I think you oughtta be payin’ more rent for your room.”

  Diana laughed. It struck her as remarkably original logic.

  “Just how do you make that out?” She tried to say it pleasantly, trying to remember that this was only a poor, ignorant woman in a semitenement. “I couldn’t really help it, could I, if someone chose to send me some flowers by mail? It wouldn’t make me any better able to pay more rent, would it? Unless you think I might sell them to somebody.” She laughed with a little tremble in the tail of it that gave a strange pathetic sound even to herself.

  “Is he your steady, or is he just a pick-up?” asked the landlady, fixing her with a cold eye. There was a strong smell of fried potatoes and onions burning that almost stifled Diana, but she paused with her foot on the lower step of the stair and stared at the woman.

  “What is a steady?” she asked, mildly interested.

  “If you don’t know, it ain’t likely he is. Well then, I thought mebbe you wasn’t so awful respectable after all as you set up to be.”

  “I really don’t know what you mean,” said Diana, almost ready to cry.

  “You must be awful dumb, then. I’m askin’ you if the flowers you got in that there package is from a regular sweetie you go with all the time or just from some bum you picked up at a nightclub? I like ta know what kinda character my tenants has. This has always been counted a respectable house. It looks kinda suspicious, you havin’ all that furniture and now gettin’ a stack o’ flowers.”

  Diana suddenly froze into dignity.

  “Really,” she said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t answer any more questions. I haven’t opened this package yet, and I haven’t the slightest idea where it came from or what it contains. But if renting a room from you gives you a right to pry into all my private affairs, I shall certainly move out tomorrow!” And she sailed upstairs carrying her big parcel with her, and suddenly remembered as she rounded the head of the stairs and prepared to ascend the next flight that she had no job and almost no money, and if she were to move out tomorrow she could only do so by dragging her furniture to the window and flinging it out in the alley with her own hands, for she certainly couldn’t pay a mover, nor rent another room, not until she got a job.

  She was so filled with shame and distress by the time she reached her room that she locked the door and flung herself down on her bed without waiting to open her unexpected parcel and had a good cry all in the dark by herself. That awful old woman and her horrible room! Oh, that she might take her precious possessions and fly to the ends of the earth away from here! Anything, anything would be better than this!

  Then suddenly she came to herself. No, anything would not be better than this! It would not be better in any way to go back home and have to live with Helen. She had come away from something infinitely worse than just an ugly room with an ignorant landlady. This was really a haven, and she must be glad for it. She must! She must ignore the poor creature downstairs and live above it all. She must have courage and trust. She would go and get a job in some little dirty restaurant if that was all there was to get. She would do anything, but she would not let circumstances conquer her. That was what Helen had thought would hap
pen, that circumstances would be too much for her and she would come meekly home and succumb to her will, and it should not be! Besides, there was Someone who cared. She had determined to believe that little tract, and it had seemed almost as if it was so, until she lost her job. But she would not let go so soon. She would trust in the One who had suffered Himself and understood.

  Suddenly she sat up and wiped her eyes, looking around her room.

  She could dimly see the parcel there on the chair where she had dropped it when she came in, and all at once an overwhelming curiosity came over her to know what it was and where it came from. Of course, it couldn’t be flowers. Who would send her flowers? Even Bobby Watkins didn’t know her address. This was probably a parcel belonging to someone else, and it might be anything but flowers. She ought to have looked at the address carefully before she came up. Now she would likely have to drag it downstairs and take it back to the post office.

  She got up and turned on her glaring bulb that, with all its unblinking blaze, barely made light enough to read by.

  Yes, there was her name written clearly, but not by any hand she knew. Bobby Watkins wrote in a round, childish script as if he had never grown up. Moreover, the address was written in a different hand from the name. Ah! The address was probably in the postmaster’s writing. It must have been forwarded from home, and now that she thought of it, she had not as yet received any mail since she had sent the postmaster her address. But what on earth could this be? It couldn’t be anything from her father; it wasn’t his writing. Nor Helen’s, either. And that was a florist’s label on the outside of the box. The landlady had some ground for one of her assertions at least. Well, if she found Bobby Watkins’s card inside, she would throw the flowers down in the alley. Even if they were gardenias!

  And what was more, if Bobby Watkins had found out where she was, she would move tomorrow morning even if she had to go and leave her things behind her. No, she couldn’t do that! She could not leave her beloved things. But she would find a way to get them out of this house at once. She would, even if she had to mortgage the job she hadn’t gotten yet to move them!

  With a hysterical little laugh, she picked up the parcel and tore open its wrappings.

  Yes, it was a florist’s box, a florist back in the home suburb!

  She found her fingers trembling as she lifted the cover of the box and turned back the wax paper wrapping. Ah! A breath from a heavenly land was wafted into her face, and her weary senses drew it in with sheer delight! Suddenly the sorrows of the last two weeks dropped away from her, and a soothing perfume wrapped around her. She looked, and her eyes were wide with wonder. Carnations. Myriads of them! Her mystery flowers had come to find her!

  For a moment her eyes swam with tears, and she saw the delicate seashell pink of the blossoms as if they were in a heavenly vision. She bowed her head, buried her face in their loveliness, and drew in deep breaths of their perfume. It satisfied her heartbreak and loneliness as a life-giving draught will quench a great thirst. Her heart was overflowing with tenderness. All her joy in the single flowers that she had found upon her pathway back at home rushed over her, and more. There was something deeper than mere sentimentality. It was not a fancied lover, casting admiration in her way; it was an overwhelming love offered to a soul that was starving and alone. It did not seem to matter who had sent these. It was not Bobby Watkins, she was sure of that. Bobby had no delicate, sensitive romance about him. Bobby brought his flowers himself and gloated over you while you opened them. Bobby could never forget himself long enough to drop a flower anonymously, for genuine love, one that cares to bless without receiving recognition or praise. It might be some woman, old or young—whoever it was it seemed like an angel to her now more than ever, a messenger from God.

  Presently she lifted her face to search for a card, almost dreading lest she should find one, yet longing, too. She could not bear to have her delight destroyed, her illusion dispelled by cold facts. She wanted to feel that it was a gift from one who knew God.

  But there was no card. Just those dear flowers, so fresh and lovely that it was almost unbelievable they had not been picked only an hour before.

  When she had satisfied herself that there was no message she put her face down to the flowers again and began to talk to them softly. “You lovely things! You beautiful mystery flowers! God sent you! No matter how He got you here I am going to believe God sent you to show me that He is caring for me!”

  Then softly she slipped down upon her knees, the flowers still in her arms, and with her lips against the fringes of one big blossom, she began to pray. “Oh, God, I believe You do care. I don’t see why You would, but I believe You do. You wouldn’t have sent me these flowers just when I needed them so badly if You didn’t care a little bit. Dear God, it doesn’t matter who You told to send them, I believe they came from You. And if it was anybody like Bobby Watkins You used, please don’t let me find it out. Please let it seem just You unless it was somebody dear.”

  She knelt there for some time, her face among the flowers, and then as memory went back to the cool, quiet, shadowed spot where she had found those other single blossoms, slowly she began to remember. She stood once more against the tall hemlock hedge, leaning against the resilient boughs, thinking of their perfume, hugging the thought of them to her sad heart, and a voice spoke again. How long ago it seemed since she heard that voice praying. What were those words? How the days that had come between had almost blotted them out. She had written them down. What were they? Then they came flocking back like birds to her call.

  “We thank Thee for the care of the day and for these gifts for our refreshment.” How the words fit her own case! She paused to wonder, and then memory went on:

  “And, Lord, we would ask Thy mercy and tenderness and leading for the people up at the great house.”

  Had that prayer been for her father’s house? If it was, had it been at all answered? Mercy and tenderness and leading. Had she had those since she had left home? Would the blessings have followed her away from the house? Mercy and tenderness and leading. Perhaps there had been a degree of all. Terrible things might have happened to her. It had seemed that they did, but now she wasn’t quite sure. Perhaps there was a degree of leading in it all.

  “Perhaps some of them are sad,” went on that unseen voice, “Lord, give them comfort.”

  Well, here were the flowers, right out of the blue, and they did seem in a degree to soothe her soul.

  “Perhaps they need guidance.”

  Ah, didn’t she?

  “Do Thou send Thy light—!”

  Oh, why hadn’t she stayed to hear the end, stayed at any cost?

  Yet the memory of the prayer was there fresh in her heart. Perhaps the answer was following her around. Perhaps these flowers had come to foreshadow some kind of light. They were comfort. Oh, for the light—!

  Then at once it came to her that the light might be found in her little tract and in the Bible to which it had directed her. Was that possible? If she would diligently seek, would she find the light and some way out of this dark maze in which she had lost her way?

  If she only could find the person whose voice had uttered that prayer! How many questions she would ask him! Perhaps in some church there would be a minister who was like that one. If she went the rounds of all the churches, she might find one to whom she would dare go and seek advice. But no—that would not do. She would see old friends, perhaps; they would ask her uncomfortable questions. She could not face the old world in which she had moved. She would seem to be criticizing her father; yet she could not explain her absence from home in any other way. No, she could not go searching among the churches. But she would search in her Bible, and now that the flowers were here they would help her. They would comfort her. She was beginning to have assurance in her heart that God cared. Dear flowers, dear mystery flowers!

  Her job was gone, but she had the flowers! The flowers would rest her, and tomorrow she could go out and get herself a job
!

  The morning brought her letters, just a few, and her heart leaped up. Perhaps there would be one to explain the flowers! And yet she almost dreaded lest there would be. If it should be that they came from some commonplace source, would it destroy her newfound faith that God cared?

  She hurried back upstairs to read them before she went out. If she sat down in the hall to do so, that terrible landlady would come out and question her again. She was so glad that she had met the postman just at the door.

  Two of the letters proved to be bills for small purchases made at the little local stores at home. One was an advertisement of an entertainment to be given in the village, one was a brief and disagreeable note from Bobby Watkins asserting that it was high time she apologized for her strange actions the night he called, and the fourth was a short note from an old schoolmate who lived in a suburb of the city.

  Edith Maythorn had never known Diana in her home surroundings, only in college. Her home, until a few months ago, had been in a far city from which she had occasionally written Diana, who for a short time had been her roommate. She had only recently come to this city to live and was not acquainted with Diana’s circle of friends. The letter was an invitation to spend the weekend with her at her new home and attend a small house party among whom were two girls who had been in college with them. When Diana read it first she shrank away from the thought of attending such a festivity. Then it occurred to her that these people did not know her circumstances at all and were not likely to come into touch with her old friends. Why not go? It was only over Sunday, and as others were to be present there would be little time for intimate talks with questionings. Why couldn’t she go and get a little breath of real living again? She had plenty of pretty clothes, and no one need know that she was contemplating taking a job in a cheap restaurant. None of these girls frequented restaurants of that sort. Why not just have a little relief from the strain of sorrow and loneliness? Incidentally, she would save money on her meals for two days, and that meant a great deal. Her cheeks burned as she remembered what sordid thoughts and impulses had come to move her now. But it was an item worth considering. And, of course, it was supposable that sometime in the future she might again be in a position to ask Edith to visit her somewhere, somehow. Monday morning she could quietly say good-bye and drift out of Edith’s ken again and that would be that, but it would give her a much-needed rest and wholesome food without cost.