The Strange Proposal

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “Aw, the references’ll answer those,” said Sam easily, “only sometimes ya havta use yer head. How’d it be if I get my Bible and show ya?”

  “I’d love it,” said Mary Elizabeth fervently. “But have you a Bible with you? I don’t know whether there would be such a thing about this house or not.”

  “Oh, sure! That’s part of it. We fellas always carry our Bibles wherever we go. We all got small ones that don’t take up much room fer traveling!”

  Sam tore up the stairs three steps at a time and returned with a small, limp Bible of surprisingly supple and diminutive proportions, and sat himself down on the upper step again.

  “Now, Mary Beth,” he commanded, “you read out the questions and references, and I’ll look ’em up and read ’em!”

  So for nearly two hours through that long, bright morning the two sat on the piazza and studied the Bible together. Questions grew out of the first question, and Sam found he had to go back to foundation principles and give some of the instruction that had been given to him during his winter in the Florida scout camp with John Saxon, but both the young teacher and the learner were so deeply engaged in the study that they were surprised, when the lunch bell rang, to discover that the morning had fled.

  Bright-faced, the boy got up from the step and tossed back his sandy hair that matched his golden freckles and grinned at her.

  “Gee! I was going crabbing this morning, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Anyhow, I’m glad I got this lesson worked out. It’s lots more fun having you do it with me. I wish I had somebody all the time. I hope I didn’t bore you.”

  “Why, I think it’s wonderful!” said Mary Elizabeth. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to study it every week with you, unless you think Mr. Saxon might mind. This isn’t a secret organization, is it? This fellowship of yours?”

  “Not on yer life!” said Sam. “We’re out ta get everybody studying we can. I’ll tell Mr. Saxon I got a new recruit.”

  Mary Elizabeth’s cheeks flamed.

  “Well, perhaps you’d better not, just yet, Sam. It might make me sort of embarrassed, you know. I’d rather wait till I learn a little more. You see, I don’t know so much about it yet. Just keep it to yourself awhile, Buddie.”

  “Okay!” agreed Sam cheerfully and grinned as if he understood. And so they went in to lunch.

  After lunch Sam went with Frank Bateman out in his boat for a little crabbing and later to watch the hauling in of the deep-sea nets.

  But Mary Elizabeth sat on the porch and faced her future.

  Chapter 13

  The day that Mary Elizabeth finally wrote her first letter to John Saxon, Sam had gone off to the inlet with Frank Bateman. They had taken a lunch, and Mary Elizabeth had the day before her uninterrupted.

  She had been invited to go along but had declined on the plea that she had letters to write and would go another time. So quite early in the middle morning she took her writing materials and established herself in a great steamer chair where she could look out across the vista of pines and lawn and see the wide blue sea and sometimes catch a glimpse of a great wave curling high and breaking in foam on the white sand through the lacework of the iron grille that surrounded the estate.

  A long time she sat with pen in hand, gazing afar, where a little white toy of a boat tossed on the blue horizon, trying to decide how to begin. She wasn’t just sure how much of her heart she was willing to reveal in that first word she would put upon the paper, but at last she began to write:

  Dear Breath-taking One:

  I have been waiting a few days since receiving your letter, trying to get my feet down to earth again after being up in the clouds with you! For you must own you were unexpected, to say the least.

  You see, you had the advantage of me—you having been looking for me a long time. You said you were afraid that the traditions of my family had prepared me for a more conventional form of prince, less interesting, less eager, more calculating! That was what I was brought up to expect in a man. My highest dreams had not dared to snatch at such a romance as you flung at me so unexpectedly coming down that aisle.

  And so I’ve had to get my bearings, and my breath, before I answered you.

  Not because your letter did not also carry me away again, but because I sensed that this was the gravest, most serious thing that would ever come into my life, and I must not write this lightly, as I have always taken all things in life so far. I wanted to weigh every word of my reply and be sure I answered you as you had a right to be answered. Your letter means too much to me to be answered on the spur of the moment.

  So I have come down to Seacrest, to an old summer home we have had a good many years, where we used to come when I was a child when my mother was living. It seems more like home than any other place on earth now, with memories in every corner and the blue sea stretched out before me. It seemed to me a place where I could be still enough to think and alone enough to talk with you.

  I brought my young cousin Sam along, whom you know. But he is away crabbing for the day, and I am alone with you.

  If I were a painter I could make you see where I am sitting looking over toward the sea. If I were a musician I could make you hear the melody the waves and pines are making in such perfect rhythm. If I were a poet, like you, I could tell you how the sea and sky and pines and the perfume of the roses growing over the porch and the quiet of the big old house behind me, full of dear memories of the past, are combining to make a haven for me where I can talk to you, this first time, as I did not feel I could back in the city.

  But I am neither poet nor painter nor musician, only a shallow girl who has gone about like a butterfly, tasting of this flower and that all over the earth, wherever a bright bloom called me. Never before have I come face-to-face with a great love and a great wonder and been able to call them mine. Therefore, I approach the matter with deep reverence and heart-searching.

  And now, I have the advantage of you! For you seem only to have found out about my financial and social position and the possible traditions that belong to the family of Wainwright, while I have been learning much of your inner life from one of your most devoted admirers, my young cousin, Sam, who seems to be remodeling his life after the pattern that you have given him.

  You cannot know what it has been to me to learn of you in this way, out of the mouth of a guileless child who adores you. And the more I have learned, the more I am filled with humility and awe to know that you should have put your love upon such a one as I.

  You have been blaming yourself for the beautiful thing that you did, in confessing your love, because you think that perhaps I have more money than you or a higher social rank in this world!

  But don’t you know that such great love as you have to offer far outweighs any such differences as those? Just material differences! And anyway, if I give you my love, wouldn’t any wealth and position I might have be yours also, just as any other asset I might have, such as hair and eyes and smiles and the like?

  And you have tried to humble yourself for matters of that sort! But I, far more, for another reason!

  Why, John Saxon, you made me feel for a few paragraphs that you were sorry for what you had done, that you repented having told me of your love. You made me jealous of that poor other girl—Helen Foster, whom neither of us has ever seen—until I read on farther and found your love again, and that healed the hurt. But it made me know as I read on, that it was my place to be humble, not yours.

  Because you have something that makes a far greater difference between us than wealth or station. You have God, and I don’t know Him! And I’m afraid He doesn’t approve of me!

  It is not that I mind being second to your God. I would count it a great honor to be so near to God as that. But John Saxon, beloved stranger, I’m afraid He wouldn’t want me there! He wouldn’t think I was worthy to be near you.

  In fact, ever since your letter came, I have felt your God standing near me, looking through my soul, and I feel so small and shamed
and utterly undone, I need to hide somewhere. I never knew a God before, not so near. I never thought about God before at all! And you are His!

  You see now, don’t you, that it is not money, nor family, nor position that should separate us, but your God!

  I feel that perhaps you know this already.

  But I love you, oh I love you, John Saxon, beloved stranger! I never loved anyone this way before. I never knew there was such love!

  And you have said that you will pray for me!

  It seems to me that I shall go reverently all my days, just because you have made mention of my name to God.

  Mary Elizabeth

  Chapter 14

  One morning a couple of days after Mary Elizabeth sent off her letter to Florida, she and Sam were sitting on the piazza deep in their Bible study. It was nearly eleven o’clock, and they had been down to the beach since breakfast having a good long swim and a run up the beach to the lighthouse and back, with another dip for a finish. They were feeling tired and quiet and ready to sit down in the coolness of the piazza and rest.

  They had been doing this intensive study for three days now, and it was a question which of the two enjoyed it most, for it had developed that Mary Elizabeth asked just the questions that the boy needed to bring back to him knowledge acquired the last winter in the Florida camping class, and he brought it forth in his most original boy manner, yet clearly, so that it was like a revelation to the girl to whom heretofore the Bible had been a sealed book full of dead sayings that meant nothing.

  Mary Elizabeth had ransacked the house for a Bible and had found one most unexpectedly in possession of Susan, the caretaker’s wife. Susan had two, one that she had earned in Sunday school as a child, reciting certain Psalms, and another with big print. She loaned the one with big print to her young mistress, with great delight that she had something worthy to lend. So Mary Elizabeth was equipped with a Bible, if not with the knowledge, to enable her to find its different books. Sam had to put her through a course in the books of the Bible before she was able to hunt out references. It was amusing to see how patient and eager he was as a teacher. He felt it was great of Mary Beth to companion with him this way. She was as good as a boy, any day, and a “lot better than some fellas!” he told her gallantly.

  This exclusive feminine fellowship might not satisfy indefinitely. Doubtless there would come a time when he would hunger and thirst for a good, rousing game of baseball. But for the present, to the lad who was accustomed to frustration of his many plans by a too-anxious parent and ensuing loneliness, it seemed for the time being bliss.

  They were deep in the mysteries of a perplexing question on John Saxon’s lesson list, the answer to which was to be found among half a dozen Bible references and required careful thought and consideration of various phases of the subject, when suddenly the honk of a loud and arrogant automobile horn close at hand broke the stillness startlingly, and around the curve of the graveled drive that circled the house there swept two costly sport cars, gleaming smugly in chrome wherever chrome could find an excuse to be, and filled with a noisy company of young people in dashing attire. The foremost car was driven by Boothby Farwell!

  “Oh, heck! What’s this?” exclaimed Sam, half rising from the step and dropping his Bible on the piazza. One could almost see his hair bristling like a cat’s at the sight of a dog in the offing.

  Mary Elizabeth looked up in dismay with a blankness in her gaze as she stared unbelievingly at her unwelcome guests. Who had invaded her quiet when she had taken so many pains to hide her going? Boothby Farwell, of all people!

  And he had dared to bring the whole bunch of her old associates from home! Cissy Ward, Tally Randall, Jane Reefer, Rita Bowers, Anne and Maude and Whitty Gensemer! She recognized them one by one, the dismay growing in her heart and face as she rose hastily from the steamer chair, leaving her open Bible where she had been sitting, and came forward to greet her uninvited guests.

  How in the world did they find out where she was? Surely her father had not given her secret away!

  But here they were, and there was nothing to do but receive them, though she felt like a child whose doll had been broken and her tea party shattered.

  “Well, isn’t this unexpected!” she said as she tried to summon her inbred courtesy and some degree of welcome into her face. “How in the world did you find out where I was?”

  This last question was directed to Boothby, who took her hand severely, possessively, and gave her a look of reproof.

  “Bribed old Tilly to tell where they forwarded your letters,” answered Boothby promptly and a little curtly. “Just what was the idea in running away like that? A game of hide-and-seek or some similar child’s play?”

  “I came down to look the old house over and see what repairs it needed,” answered Mary Elizabeth coolly, with a steady, impersonal look at her former beau and no heightening of her color.

  “Well, it’s about time you came back again then,” he said, with a contemptuous glance at the house of other days. “What’s the idea of repairing this old barracks, anyway? It’s a waste of money, I should say.”

  “It happens that we don’t feel that way,” laughed Mary Elizabeth. “Won’t you come up on the piazza? I think we can make you fairly comfortable, even if we are a bit antiquated. Sam, can you bring out a few chairs?”

  Sam greatly resembled a cat up a tree with its back arched, but he slowly unbristled and went into the house after chairs, giving a baleful glance backward at Boothby Farwell, the perpetrator of this intrusion into his Eden.

  “Oh, don’t bothah!” said Boothby Farwell, looking about contemptuously. “We’re not going to stay here, of course. We came to get you and take you up the coast to lunch. Get your hat and come on. Or perhaps you don’t need a hat?”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” said Mary Elizabeth sweetly. “I couldn’t possibly leave. I have a man coming to do some electrical work, and I have to be here all the afternoon. He may come any minute now.”

  “Send word to him not to come then. You simply must go with us! We’ve come all this way to get you, and you can’t disappoint us that way.”

  Then the girls began to clamor, and the other men.

  “Oh, come on, Elizabeth! Don’t be a flat tire!”

  But Mary Elizabeth stood her ground firmly.

  “I can’t possibly go,” she said. “You’ll have to get out and take lunch with me. I have a maid here who will be delighted to have someone to serve. Come up and sit down and cool off. There’s really a wonderful view of the sea here, and we’ll have a pitcher of lemonade at once. Sam, dear”—she gave her young cousin a ravishing smile that reduced him to her abject slave again—“could you ask Susan to make us some lemonade?”

  “We’ve something better than lemonade in the car,” said Boothby coolly, “and none of us are thirsty! We’ve just been drinking. We came to get you.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know!” said Mary Elizabeth with a twinkle at Sam. “No lemonade, then, Sam. We don’t need it!”

  Sam grinned and took his seat on the step again, gathering up his Bible as calmly as if it were a spelling book.

  “What on earth are you doing?” asked one of the girls, coming up the steps and looking at the Bible curiously.

  Mary Elizabeth looked at her guest as if she had not noticed her before. She caught a glimpse of Sam’s lowering countenance, and then she said brightly, “Why, my cousin and I were doing a little studying together.”

  Cissy Ward flung a curious glance at her in turn and then picked up the Bible from Sam’s knees and gave it a comprehensive scrutiny.

  “Oh,” she said lightly, “is this your spelling book? Tally, can you spell ‘Methuselah’?”

  “Not me!” Tally said shrugging lightly with a wicked little gleam in his handsome reckless eyes. “I couldn’t even pronounce it.”

  “You’re mistaken,” said Mary Elizabeth in a clear voice that they all could hear. “That isn’t my speller, it’s my ABC book. I’ve o
nly just begun on my alphabet, but if I live long enough, I mean to get so I can read it and understand it. I never took a course in the Bible, and I thought it was about time.”

  They all focused their eyes on her. Cissy was flecking the leaves of Sam’s Bible through carelessly. Tally had picked up the Bible that Mary Elizabeth had left lying in her chair, examining it comically as if he meant to analyze it and dissect it. The other young folks were climbing out of the car and coming up the steps. They sensed that there was a distinct situation and that Mary Elizabeth was dominating it. They had wondered a little why Boothby, who was usually so exclusive in his invitations, had invited them all to come along after Mary Elizabeth. Now they were sure that something had gone awry between them, and she, most unusually, was holding out against him. They were not quite sure what part they were to play in this one-act drama, but they entered gaily into it, determined to get as much fun out of it as possible and, incidentally, stir up the chief actors in the plot to reveal the point of the whole matter. So Cissy, who stopped at nothing when she was on to some hot gossip, suddenly held Sam’s precious Bible aloft in her thumb and finger and shouted to them in a high, shrieking voice: “Listen, boys and girls, I’ve found out what’s the matter with Liz’beth! She’s turning religious, and we’ll have to snap her out of it. This book’s evidently at the bottom of it, and we’ll have to burn the book! Who’ll build the bonfire, boys and girls? Here goes the book! Catch it!”

  But just as Cissy Ward was about to fling the offending Bible out over the steps, Sam sprang into the air, catching his precious Bible in one hand and Cissy Ward’s extended arm in the other, setting her down hard on one of the porch rockers.

  Sam looked almost grown up as he turned angrily upon the astonished girl.

  “That’s my Bible!” he declared in a clear, ringing voice that had lost its boyish treble and seemed almost manly in its accent. “If you wantta play horse with Bibles go getcherself one of yer own ta use, and don’t take mine. I guess they have some back in the city stores!”