Beloved Stranger

by Grace Livingston Hill

  He looked at her, startled, blanching. “And you knew all that, and yet you married me?” “Yes,” said Arla, her voice trembling. He suddenly dropped his head upon her shoulder. “I’m not worthy of you,” he groaned. “I guess I never was!”

  “That has nothing to do with it, Carter!” she said almost fiercely. “I love you, and you shall be worthy! Say you will, Carter, oh, say you will!”

  Her tone fairly wrung the promise from him.

  “I’m a rotten low-down beast!” he said between his clenched teeth. “I can say I will, Arla, but I don’t even know if I can do what I say I will.”

  “Yes, you can!” said Arla in the tone of a mother determined to save her young. “You shall! I’ll help you! I’ll make you. When you’re weak, then I’ll be strong for you! I’ve got to! I’ll die if you can’t be brought back to be a decent man again!”

  For a long time his face was hidden on her shoulder, and his whole frame shook with emotion, but her arms were about him, and she held him close, her tears raining down unheeded upon his bowed head.

  At last he said in a low tone husky with emotion, “If you can love me like that after all I’ve done to you, then perhaps I can! I’ll try!”

  Then eagerly she lifted his face to hers and their lips met, their tears mingling.

  It was sometime after that that Arla spoke, gently, quietly.

  “Now, oughtn’t we to be doing something about a boat to go back on?”

  Carter looked up and his capable business expression came upon him.

  “I think first, perhaps, I’d better cable to that man that made the offer about the business. He’ll maybe go back on it, or have done something else already, you know.”

  “You’re right!” said Arla. “Let’s go together. I can’t be separated from you now till it’s all fixed.”

  “Yes, come!” he said, catching her fingers. “Oh, Arla, there’s maybe something for us somewhere, when you can love me like this!”

  Thus Arla entered on her life undertaking of making a man.

  “This diamond,” she said thoughtfully, looking at the gorgeous ring on her finger, “and those pearls. Are they paid for, Carter?”

  She watched him keenly as the slow color mounted to his forehead again, and his eyes took on a shamed look.

  “Because if they’re not,” she hastened to say, “let’s send them back, I mean take them back or something.

  They’re not really mine, you know. They never were. You got them for her, and I think of it every time I look at them. Someday when we can afford it, you can get me some of my own, and I’d like that much better.”

  Carter went and stood by the window, looking out with unseeing eyes. His perceptions were turned inside to himself. He was seeing just what kind of a contemptible failure he had been. Seeing it as nothing else but utter failure could have made him see.

  “There’s no end to it!” he moaned hoarsely.

  “Yes, we’ll get to the end of it, only let’s make a clean sweep now once and forever. Suppose we sit down while we’re waiting for the answer to that cable and write down a list of things that have to go back or be sold or something, and debts that have to be paid. Don’t forget anything. Let’s just look it all in the face and know where we stand.”

  “We don’t have a place to stand!” said the disheartened man. “Every foot of ground under us is mortgaged. That’s what you’ve—what we’ve—what I’ve brought you to, Arla!”

  Arla’s eyes had a strange light of hope in them as she looked at him. He hadn’t said she had brought him to that. He had started to, but he hadn’t said it. He had acknowledged that he had done it himself! There was some hope.

  They had about a week to wait for the boat they had decided to take, and they went to cheap lodgings and made little excursions here and there on foot, seeing what they could of the old world in a humble way. Perhaps nothing could have better prepared Carter to go from a life of extravagance into plain homely economy like taking their pleasure without cost. For Arla wouldn’t let them spend an unnecessary cent. She had everything down to the last penny now, and was determined that they should get free from debt.

  “Someday,” said Carter, watching a young couple, obviously on their wedding trip as they entered a handsome automobile and drove happily away, “someday I’ll bring you over here, and we’ll see Europe in the right way.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Arla, her lips set with determination. “We’ve got to get over expecting things like that. If we ever get rich, it might happen, and then of course it would be great, but it isn’t likely, not for a long time anyway, and we’re not going to expect it nor fret that we haven’t got it. It’s wanting things we haven’t got that has nearly wrecked our lives, and we’re going to stop it! We’re going to have a good time on nothing if we have to, and just be glad.”

  There was disillusionment in her voice and eyes, but there was cheer and good comradeship. Carter looked at her in wonder and was strangely comforted.

  But Arla turned away her disillusioned eyes and struggled to keep back sudden tears. She was getting on very well, it was true. Carter had been far more tractable than she had hoped, and that gleam of self-abasement had been hopeful, yet she knew it was but transient. He was weak. He was full of faults. He would fall again and again. He would lapse back into his old self. The world was too full of temptations and ambitions for her to hope for a utopian life with him. Hell was there with its wide-open doors, and her strength was so small! She suddenly felt like sinking under it all. Just courage, her own courage, just determination, couldn’t pull him out of this and make him into a decent man again, a man in whom she could trust, upon whom she could lean. Oh, for some strength greater than her own! Oh, for some power to right their lives! Happiness in such circumstances? She knew it was impossible. A good time on nothing? Yes, if they loved and trusted each other perfectly perhaps, but not when one had constantly to bear the other up.

  Oh, she would go on as she had promised, stand by him through everything. She loved him. Yes, she loved him. But there was a desolate desperateness about it all. She knew it. She knew it even while she set her beautiful strong red lips in determination to go on and succeed. She knew intuitively that there was something lacking! Some great need that would come, some need for help outside of themselves. Just human effort couldn’t accomplish it.

  Would Carter ever come to see that he was radically wrong, not just unfortunate? Would his remorse over his failure ever turn to actual repentance?

  Oh, for something strong and true to rest down upon! And vaguely even while she tried to set her courage once more for higher attainment, she knew that what she was trying to do was just another of the world’s delusions. She never by her own mere efforts could save Carter from himself. She might help perhaps, better things in great degree, make life more bearable, more livable, but still in the end there would be failure! What was it they needed? Oh, there must be something, some way!

  So with desperation in her eyes, a vision of a future full of useless efforts, she turned back to her heavy task.

  Chapter 21

  Sherrill, filled with a startled premonition that clouded her eagerness over the package, tore off the wrappings and pulled out the little bundle in its cover of silk, shook out the bit of lingerie, a sort of consternation beginning to dawn in her face. This was her own, one of the things that had been in Arla’s suitcase!

  Then she recognized the little leather case and snapped open the catch, dropping out the note that Arla had written. It fell unheeded to the floor.

  But there were no lovely little bottles in the case! What was this, just handkerchiefs? She pulled them out, just catching the heavy little lump knotted in the handkerchief, before it fell.

  With hands that trembled now with excitement, she unknotted the corners of linen that Arla had tied so hastily, and stood staring as the gleam of the great green stones flashed out to her astonished gaze.

  “Oh, Aunt Pat! It’s come! My emerald neckl
ace has come back! Look! The stones are all here! Gemmie! Oh, Gemmie! Where are you? The emerald necklace has come back! It’s found! It’s found! Oh, isn’t it wonderful that I should find it just now?”

  Gemmie hurried in from the bathroom where she had been pretending to pick up the towels and place clean ones. Her eyes were still suspiciously red, and she came and stood there looking at the jewels, the most amazed, embarrassed, mortified woman whom one could find, heartily ashamed at all she had been thinking and doing, almost half suspicious yet.

  “Where did they come from?” she asked sharply. “Who took them?”

  “What does it matter now?” sang Sherrill. “They’re here and I don’t have to worry anymore! Oh, I’m so glad, so glad!”

  “What’s this on the floor?” said Aunt Pat, whose sharp eyes had sighted the twisted note.

  Gemmie stooped down and handed the note to Sherrill, and Sherrill read it aloud. Read the name, too, Arla McArthur, and never thought how that last part was once to have been her own.

  “Oh, Miss Sherrill!” Her voice was shaking with emotion. “It certainly is wonderful. And I’m that ashamed! And me thinking all this time—!”

  But nobody was listening to Gemmie. Aunt Pat asked to see the note, and Sherrill handed it happily over to her. She read it carefully, and then with her little wry smile and a twinkle in her eye, she remarked, “So you dropped it in the suitcase when you were packing! Well, it may be so, Sherrill! Of course it may be so!”

  Then when Gemmie had gone out of the room on some errand, she said, “Well, Sherrill, I’m glad you learned to trust him before it turned up!” and met with a wicked little grin and another twinkle of her bright eyes her niece’s indignant denial that she had ever done anything but trust him.

  An hour later, dressed once more in her wedding satin, with the long silvery folds flowing out behind her, and the soft veil blossom-wreathed upon her head, Sherrill stood before her mirror. The faithful Gemmie knelt beside her, arranging the folds of her train.

  Someone tapped at the door and handed in a big box.

  “It’ll be your flowers,” said Gemmie in an awestruck voice. She brought in the box and opened it, carefully taking out the lovely bridal bouquet of wedding roses and lilies.

  “It’s much, much nicer than the other one, Miss Sherrill,” she said in deep satisfaction as her eyes gloated over the flowers. “They’re a better quality of flower; they are indeed! And I like the white ribbons much better than the silver. It comes from the most expensive place in the city, too; it really does. They have all the quality orders—they! They really do!”

  “Oh, you dear old silly,” said Sherrill affectionately. “But it is lovely, isn’t it? I like it better, too!”

  “Well, I like yer man, Miss Sherrill, I’ll say that!” added Gemmie shamefacedly. “And now I’ll just be running over to see if Miss Pat wants anything. And mind you don’t go to playing any more pranks on us, slipping in another woman on me for a bride,” she added anxiously.

  “No, Gemmie, I’ll stay right here this time,” laughed Sherrill. “I won’t give this man up to any other girl!”

  So Sherrill stood before her mirror in her bridal array once more and looked into her own mirrored eyes. Happy eyes this time, without a shade of fear or hesitation in them. Eyes full of trust and hope. And suddenly as she faced herself, she closed her eyes and lifted her head and spoke into the silent room: “Dear God, I thank You that You took away what I thought I wanted, even though it hurt, and gave me what You had kept for me. Oh, make me worthy of such joy, and make me always ready to yield to Your will.”

  Silently she stood with bowed head for a moment more, and then with a lovely light in her face, she lifted her head and went to meet her bridegroom at the head of the stairs.

  The little assembly of congenial guests were waiting for them as the two walked down the stairs. An old musician friend of Aunt Pat’s was playing the wedding march on the piano, and the minister stood waiting before a hastily assembled background of palms and ferns. Sherrill walked into the room on the arm of her bridegroom and took her place to be married, her heart swelling with joy and peace.

  It was a simple ceremony, few words, solemn pledges, another ring to go with her diamond, and dear people coming up to congratulate her. There was one fine old gentleman among them, a friend of Graham’s father, who told her what a wonderful man she was getting, and wished her the simple earnest wishes of a bygone day.

  And there were amazing presents. Some of them had been sent here before and returned, and returned again now, laughingly, because their donors had had no time to get something new. And there was a happy little time with a few tears at the end. Then Sherrill kissed Aunt Pat and Gemmie, too, and in her pretty dark-blue going-away dress that she had never worn until now, was whisked off in Aunt Pat’s car to the airport, and taken in an airplane to New York. An hour later the ship weighed anchor and set sail for South America. It didn’t seem possible that all this had happened since the golden-hearted roses arrived that morning.

  Sherrill and her beloved stranger husband stood at last on deck in a quiet place alone. They watched the lights of their native land disappear into the distance, looked at the great moonlit ocean all about them, and clung closer together.

  “To think that God saw all this ahead for me, and saved me from making such a terrible mistake!” said Sherrill softly.

  “He knoweth the end from the beginning,” quoted Graham, holding her hand close in his own and looking down into her sweet eyes.

  “Yes, but the best of all is,” said Sherrill after a little pause, “that He brought me to know Himself. Graham, if I hadn’t been stopped in what I thought I wanted most of all in the world, I would never likely have known the Lord Jesus, nor have found out what a wonderful book the Bible is.”

  “And I perhaps would never have found a girl who knew my heavenly Father!” said Graham. “His will is always best.”

  Then softly he began to sing, and her voice blended with his tenderly:

  “Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!

  Hold o’er my being absolute sway!

  Fill with Thy Spirit till all shall see

  Christ only, always, living in me!”

  GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL (1865–1947) is known as the pioneer of Christian romance. Grace wrote more than a hundred faith-inspired books during her lifetime. When her first husband died, leaving her with two daughters to raise, writing became a way to make a living, but she always recognized storytelling as a way to share her faith in God. She has touched countless lives through the years and continues to touch lives today. Her books feature moving stories, delightful characters, and love in its purest form.

  Love Endures

  Grace Livingston Hill Classics

  Available in 2012

  The Beloved Stranger

  The Prodigal Girl

  A New Name Re-creations

  Tomorrow about This Time

  Crimson Roses

  Blue Ruin

  Coming through the Rye

  The Christmas Bride

  Ariel Custer

  Not under the Law

  Job’s Niece