The Strange Proposal

by Grace Livingston Hill

  He started down the path to meet the approaching boy, his hand up to hush him to silence should he start explaining in a shout.

  But this boy did not shout. He came silently, with shining eyes and a solemn face, as if he were performing angels’ duty. And he came as if he were answering a far, desperate call.

  It was when John reached the little white gate and swung it open to stop the progress of his unexpected guests that he recognized the boy and stopped short in wonder and astonishment and a growing relief. Here at last was someone he knew, someone who would understand, even though he was but a boy. Someone who could run errands if he could not do anything else! And John swung out into the road and grasped the hand of the prayer partner who had arrived so suddenly out of the blue.

  “Sam! Dear lad!” he managed to say in a husky voice and with a tone that one man might use to another, deeply beloved.

  “How is she?” Sam asked breathlessly. “Is she alive yet? ‘Cause I got yer doctor and a nurse! They’re right behind me! Did we get here in time? We started as soon as we could after the letter came.”

  “You’ve got a doctor?” John Saxon eyed the boy in a joyful wonder. Almost any doctor would be a help when he had had to go on his own so long, tortured with uncertainty and mortally aware of his own inexperience.

  “Yer own doctor! Doctor MacKelvie! Dr. Martin MacKelvie!” said Sam proudly, mindful not to let his voice rise. Both the doctor and the nurse and the two cousins had warned Sam about this. He must be utterly aware that he was in the presence of great danger. He must not startle a sick person.

  John put his hands on the shoulders of the boy and looked deeply into the young eyes, and his own eyes were full of tears.

  “Kid!” he said. “Oh, kid! I’ll never forget this! It’s a miracle! How you ever did it I can’t understand, but thank God you’ve come!”

  Chapter 20

  When Mary Elizabeth awoke the morning after they set sail in the air, all the world was roseate with an opal sea. Clouds like lovely pastel draperies were floating intimately, and the earth showed below, quite empty of human life.

  And then it all came over Mary Elizabeth just what she was doing, and she was appalled at herself. How did she know that her ministrations would be welcome? How did she know that they would not be resented as unwarranted interference? Just because the doctor and nurse had assented to going, even a great doctor like the one she had secured, just because her father and her uncle had made no serious objection and her cousin Richie was piloting his most commodious plane in his best and swiftest style, was no guarantee that John Saxon might not be angry at what she was doing.

  After all, John Saxon was a stranger, an utter stranger, and the letter he had written her days and days ago, the contact she had had from him, might be repented of by this time, or forgotten. He might be angry that she had not replied to it sooner.

  And now she was sorry that she had written so soon. It would be easier to face him, not having replied so frankly to him yet, than to go down there nosing into his affairs, daring to bring a nurse and doctor without his knowing it, and remember that she had told him baldy that she loved him. Him! An utter stranger! She must have lost her head!

  She remembered how jubilant she had been last night when each step of the way had been accomplished so easily. She might have known it was all too easy. There would be a hitch in her plans somewhere. Either John Saxon would have telegraphed for another doctor and he was already there and his mother better, or she might have passed away even before their expedition of relief had started. In either case, how flat she would feel to arrive under such circumstances.

  How clearly she saw that she should have wired her intention, or asked for permission, or at least sent him word they were on the way! Yet, just as clearly, she had thought last night that it would be better to come as an entire surprise. She had instinctively felt that he would never allow her to come if he knew beforehand, and she would never forgive herself if his mother died and she had done nothing to save her.

  She went through an embarrassing dialogue between Dr. MacKelvie and the possible other doctor John Saxon might have secured. She met a withering glance from the keen MacKelvie Scotch-blue eyes that she knew by instinct could glitter like steel when reproving. And how she would hate being disapproved of by him whom she had already begun to like, possibly just because she knew John Saxon liked him.

  Then she took up that other possibility of death having arrived before them. In that event, she would be questioned. There had been little time so far, and she had to remember that the approval of doctor, father, uncle, and cousin had all been given without a sufficient knowledge of the facts. She fairly cringed when she remembered that.

  Suppose, for instance, that they knew that her sole connection with the sick woman whom she had turned heaven and earth to rescue was through a son whom she had never seen but once, and who had proposed marriage on the way down the aisle at a church wedding. “Unwarranted interference” is what her father would say, and her uncle would ask, “What is HE to Mary Beth?” She could hear him now. She could almost hear the disapproval of Aunt Clarice’s tone even from the mountains afar, when she heard about it. Not that anybody who knew would mean to tell her, but Aunt Clarice always heard about everything.

  Suppose they knew she had written him a shameless letter telling him she loved him, when she hadn’t known him but a few hours? Suppose they knew that she’d never even laid eyes on the sick woman for whom she was taking this wild, extravagant trip?

  Mary Elizabeth shut her eyes on the roseate and opal world below her and let these things roll over her. Yielded her thoughts to the prospect of the morning when she should arrive before this unknown lover, not knowing how he had taken her letter. This lover who knew God so well and lived in a world of spiritual things that she could not even understand.

  And then panic took her. She could never, never be present at arrival. She must not be part of the picture. Her presence would only bring mortification and misunderstanding to John Saxon. And certainly to herself! Before this strange doctor who knew John Saxon, and who thought of her—what did he think? Before this unfamiliar nurse, with her gray hair and keen eyes, who doubtless had her thoughts also.

  She arose hastily and went forth to prepare her plans. She must get hold of Sam and wake him up and have a talk with him. Sam was her biggest asset. Sam believed in her and would do as she said. He would be true and keep his mouth shut. A pity to wake him up so soon, but better to get the matter settled between them before others awoke and took a hand in making plans. This was her party, and she meant to manage it.

  But she discovered that Sam was up and wide awake, as perky as a robin. He was not missing a single rose or opal of the world below him. He was looking down, and his eyes were full of wonder and deep satisfaction, and also a kind of strange, boy peace. But when she thought about it a second time, she thought his eyes seemed as if he was praying, right out there in the clouds, watching God’s wonderful waking world below him!

  She conveyed to the boy her idea of arrival, that he should be the first to announce their approach. His eyes assented understandingly.

  “And you’ll make it appear that this was your expedition, because it would hurt him otherwise?”

  “Oh, sure!” said the boy, like an experienced accomplice.

  “And you won’t say a word about me?”

  Sam gave her a quick, startled look.

  “Aren’t you going to be there? Aren’t you coming with us? I thought you were coming with us, Mary Beth! You are with us! You can’t go back on that!”

  “Oh, of course, but I’m going to keep in the background. It may not be necessary for me to go to the house. The more people there are, the more embarrassing it will be for your Mr. Saxon.”

  He thought about this a minute, and then he said, fixing her with troubled, searching eyes, “You’ll come when it is necessary. You’d come then, right away, Mary Beth?”

  “Oh, of course,”
she promised easily. “If I am needed for anything.”

  “You’ll be needed.”

  “Well, you’ll remember what I said and keep me out of it, if possible? I did this for you, you know.”

  “Okay!” said Sam sturdily, and she knew he would.

  And afterward she had a talk with her grave gray-haired cousin Richie.

  “I think it would be better if you were just to stop in the town and drop me off, Cousin Richie,” she said. “I can be looking up accommodations for us all and hire a taxi or car to drive back and forth with.”

  Her cousin studied her silently a minute.

  “What’s the idea, Bess? Somebody you’re afraid of? It isn’t like you to get up an expedition and then cut and run and leave the whole business on your poor henchmen.”

  Mary Elizabeth colored up rosily in spite of herself and then was vexed.

  “Not at all, Cousin Richie. I thought you would think that plan eminently sensible and showing foresight.”

  “On the contrary, it looks to me as if you were losing your perspective and forgetting the main object of the flight, which is to save a life, as I understand it. I’ve just been talking with your eminent doctor, and I find he is anxious to lose not one more minute than is necessary. He evidently has some suspicions as to the nature of the trouble, and he feels that time is a big factor. I think we’ll just drop down there by the house as quick as we can.”

  “Oh!” said Mary Elizabeth, with a sudden fright in her eyes. “Of course! I didn’t realize!”

  “And besides, Mary Bess, we’ve slept in this old ship one night, can’t we stand a few more nights if necessary, to save a life? Speaking of foresight, I stocked up with enough food to last several days. We carry our hotel with us, remember, and if you ask me, I think you’ll find it about the only stopping place open around our destination. This is summer, lady, and hotels have mostly moved north.”

  “Oh!” said Mary Elizabeth, a trifle appalled. “Of course!”

  Then she was still for some time, trying to adjust her mind and her plans and her panicky state to this new point of view.

  “I’ve been talking with the kid,” went on her cousin. “He says there’s a vacant field across the road from the house, large enough, he thinks, for landing. I think we’ll make for that.”

  “Yes!” said Mary Elizabeth, wondering what had become of her poise.

  She looked up and assented to her cousin’s plans and managed her usual smile, but the fact remained that she was just plain scared at the whole thing.

  It was not until the doctor came to her and began to ask questions again about how much she knew of the case and the circumstances, that she got her self-control back and forced her thoughts into sensible, everyday grooves. This was an emergency in which she was trying to save a life, and she must not think of anything else. Romance and all that must be put aside. She must strain every nerve to help answer the prayer that Sam had made for John Saxon’s mother!

  Then the doctor looked her in the eye.

  “If this is a case for operating,” he said, searching her face, “have you the nerve to help the nurse? I may need several hands to work quickly. Our pilot here has already offered himself. It may not be necessary, but can I rely on you if I have to?”

  “Of course,” she said simply.

  “Ever been present at an operation?” He was still searching her face.

  “No,” she said, feeling very ignorant and useless.

  “Lose your nerve easily? Faint at the sight of blood?”

  “Oh, no!” said Mary Elizabeth earnestly, realizing that it was only the sight of a certain young man who could make her lose her nerve. She never remembered to have felt this panicky way before.

  “All right, you be ready then if I call on you,” he said and began to instruct her in the common rudiments of being sanitarily ready to enter an operating room.

  Then Mary Elizabeth ceased thinking about herself and her own emotions and was filled with awe over the courage it must take to cut into a human life, even in order to try and save it. All the rest of the way she was thinking about that mother lying there, dying, with her desperate doctor-son doing his best to save her, until she wanted to cry out to the plane to go faster, and she looked down and tried to count the miles as they sped on.

  It was Mary Elizabeth who first began to notice the tropical trees, the tall pines with their draperies of moss, the palmettos turning their fanned spikes to heaven, the groves of dark glossy orange and grapefruit trees.

  But it was Sam who finally guided the pilot to that wide vacant space, cleared of logs and stumps and offering no hindrance to landing.

  The nurse had not spoken often. She was old in experience. Many words were not needed to adjust her to a given set of circumstances. That was why Dr. MacKelvie brought her on emergency cases, instead of a younger nurse. She asked Mary Elizabeth a few questions about the case, and when she found how little Mary Elizabeth really knew, she just smiled gravely and said, “Oh, well, we’ll find out when we get there.”

  But she was a woman of skill and courage and adaptability, one could easily see at a glance, and Mary Elizabeth liked her. She gave one a restful feeling of trust and assurance.

  Sam recognized landmarks long before Mary Elizabeth did, though she had often been to that same beach but never out in the direction of the Saxon home.

  Sam did not need to be told when to get out. At the first possible moment, his feet touched the ground and he started on a run. The doctor was not far behind, with his leather case, leaving the nurse to follow. These two, the nurse and doctor, were intent only on the case for which they had come. They did not look about them, nor apparently have a thought beyond the immediate danger they had come to meet, the life they had come, if possible, to save, and they hurried to the house exactly as if they had been there before and knew every inch of the way.

  But Mary Elizabeth lingered, for she suddenly saw John Saxon standing by his gate, the crisp curls of his hair standing awry, his shirt open at the neck, his sleeves rolled up, a rumpled look about his garments, and a haggard look upon his dear face so different from the handsome man who had walked beside her down that aisle.

  But suddenly she knew she was glad that she had come. She would not have stayed away for anything in life, not for fear of shame nor scorning. She would have come just to help him, whether he wanted it or not. The fact that he needed it justified anything she had done.

  Cousin Richie came behind her as she hesitated and helped her from the plane, and together they walked over to the house, gravely, in silence. She was glad he did not talk to her. She thought that after this was over, if there was anything left of her, she would make him know how wonderful he had been. But now her eyes were on the tall man standing at the gate, the man with weary eyes and lines about his mouth, lines of suffering. How dear, preciously dear, he was to her! It was almost unbelievable that a stranger could in such a short time have become so dear.

  He had not seen her yet. He was all taken up with the surprise of meeting his old professor. She could hear the ring of his voice, the very eagerness in this clear, silent atmosphere, even though she could tell his voice was hushed for the sickroom near at hand. Yet, in spite of that, she could hear his words.

  “This is great of you to come, Dr. Mac! If I had known where to find you at this time of year I wouldn’t have dared ask!” And then the two turned and took great strides across the road and into the house, their voices dropping lower, gravely speaking of the case, but the words could no longer be heard.

  She was almost glad he had not seen her, though her heart was crying out hungrily for just one glance. She continued to walk slowly across the road beside her cousin, aware that he was watching her keenly and wondering about the good-looking giant who hadn’t even seen her. She struggled to regain what she called her poise, looking with tender eyes toward the plain little house that had yet so much atmosphere of home about it. She was taking in the beauty of the setting among
the glossy dark trees, breathing the perfume of the hidden blossoms, getting glimpses of golden fruit. But most of all she was feeling the peace that seemed to hover over the place, even though the shadow of death might be approaching. She had a feeling that the inmates of that home were all ready for it if it should come and would accept the sorrow that it might bring in sweetness and courage. How was it that she seemed to know so much about this stranger and his family? Did love give one new perceptions?

  They had reached the open door of the house now and were glancing hesitantly within.

  The big, cool room with its cheap white muslin curtains, its comfortable but shabby chairs, its homemade bookshelves filled with rows and rows of books, running all about the room wherever there was space, was most inviting, everything in perfect order, though the mistress of the house was laid low. John had kept it that way. There could not be many servants available, she knew, even if he had not stated in his letter that he was housemaid, nurse, and doctor in one, for Mary Elizabeth had noticed as they were coming down that there were no houses, nor even shanties for any servant to come from, any nearer than the village. With appreciative eyes she took in the few bits of ornaments, the one fine picture, the photographs. There was culture and taste here. But of course, she had known there would be. Her eyes were only corroborating what her heart had told her.

  Hesitantly they lingered at the doorway, Mary Elizabeth and her cousin Richie, anxious eyes fixed on the open door where they could dimly see the outlines of a white bed. The doctor and nurse and John Saxon had gone in there and were consulting.

  Cousin Richie had dropped upon a straight chair by the door, alertly, as if he was ready for immediate action if it was needed. Mary Elizabeth gave him a grateful glance. It was as if he were an old friend of the family and understood. She noticed suddenly the dependable, dear look about Cousin Richie. Of course, he was a noted flier and had his name and picture in the papers all the time, and she was entirely familiar with his genial smile and his keen eyes and weathered face, but she hadn’t noticed before that dependable look, that tenderness about his lips that was usually masked in his merry smile. She was used to him, probably, and of course it must have been there all the time. That was why she had turned to him instinctively when she needed the plane. Sometime she would tell him how he had made her feel. But now she was just grateful. She felt as if this were a sacred moment, while she was looking about for the first time upon the home of her stranger-beloved.