Marry a Stranger

by Susan Barrie

  “As I said just now, I think the lunch was responsible,” he remarked, with twinkling eyes.

  “Do you?” Her embarrassment returned. “I really was terribly hungry.”

  “You poor child!” He sobered instantly, and this time he did lay a hand over both of hers that were clasping one another in her lap, and squeezed them gently. And he even picked one of them up and looked at it, long-fingered and slender and once very brown, but now pale as a water-lily, with the scarlet-tipped nails Miss Hunt had insisted on, and a little bony and blue-veined besides, especially where it joined the fragile wrist. “Why on earth did you want to starve yourself?” he demanded afresh. And added: “You’re not fit to live in London and look after yourself, are you?”

  “No, I suppose I’m not,” she admitted, the kindness in his voice making her own voice shake a little.

  “Then what are we going to do with you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, and wondered helplessly what exactly she was going to do.

  “Pack you off to the country again and let you live there, at least until you’re thoroughly fit once more?”

  “There’s nowhere in the country I can live,” she told him soberly. “My old home has been sold, and I can’t expect friends to take me in an let me stay with them. Not that I would even ask them,” she added hastily.

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” he said soothingly, as if that was the last thing he expected her to do. “But you can live in the country just the same.”

  “How?” She looked at him with widened eyes.

  “I have a house in Herefordshire—several miles from your old home, but it was there that your father and I first became acquainted—and you can live there. How would you like that?”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t”—with another trembling sigh in the words, and shaking her head regretfully. “I couldn’t possibly, and you know it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—”

  “Because it wouldn’t be quite convenable, as the French say? And as Miss Hunt would probably say as well! And neither probably would it if you went there as Miss Stacey Brent, but as Mrs. Martin Guelder it would be perfectly all right, wouldn’t it? You could stay there as long as you liked.”

  She stared at him. She wondered whether her ears were playing her tricks. Or, possibly, it was the heat—or the after-effects of that unaccustomed sherry!

  “Mrs.—Martin Guelder...?”

  “As my wife, yes!”

  She was quite sure, now, that she must be slightly delirious. She went so pale that he looked at her sharply.

  “Feeling all right?” he asked.

  “Yes; perfectly all right, but—did you say—your wife...?”

  “I think it would be a good plan if you married me,” he answered her calmly. “It would solve so many problems—yours especially. But if the idea upsets you we’ll talk about it later, perhaps after a cup of tea somewhere.”

  “It doesn’t upset me,” she informed him tremulously, “but—I can’t believe that you know what you’re talking about!”

  She was quite sure that he didn’t know what he was talking about. He, an eminent physician, a man with a future, a man, moreover, quite a number of years older than she was, distinguished, undeniably good-looking—when she glanced at him sideways and saw the clean outline of his profile, with his strong, firm jaw, excellent mouth, good straight nose and clever brow, and the way that dark, crisp wing of his hair dipped towards his eyebrow, her heart almost turned over inside her, because already she knew it to be the only masculine profile in the world she would ever want to gaze at constantly—for him even to think of linking his life with hers was almost laughable. Completely laughable! She, the inexperienced country girl, barely twenty-one, with no background, no family—nothing very much!

  Why, he knew nothing at all about her! They were strangers—or virtually strangers! They had met three times!

  And what of Vera Hunt...?

  “Of course, I realize that you are only joking,” she said, trying to sound as if she thought it was an excellent joke herself, as he started up the car with the object of going in search of a place where they could have tea.

  “Am I?” He was concentrating on the road ahead, but he smiled a little. “Well, we’ll discuss the joke further over a pot of tea and some of the usual highly indigestible pastries, if we can find any!”

  And he declined to say anything further until they were seated facing one another beneath a striped umbrella, on a velvety lawn which ran down to the water’s edge, and a waitress had attended to their wants, and Stacey had accepted a cigarette and he deliberately studied her face while he held a match to the end of it.

  “Well,” he demanded very quietly, then, “what is there so very funny about my asking you to marry me?”

  Stacey’s face flamed. The color actually disappeared under her hair.

  “There’s nothing funny at all, only—you can’t possibly mean it,” she got out, in a little rush.

  “My dear girl,” he expostulated mildly, “it’s not my habit to propose marriage to young women of your age, with no protector behind them, without any intention at all of honoring the proposal. And as a matter of fact it has never been a habit of mine to propose marriage to anyone—save once in my life, and that was a good many years ago.”

  Stacey could only stare at him in astonishment, and he crushed out the end of his cigarette, and lit another.

  “And I can’t help feeling that you need someone to look after you—badly.”

  “But—but you hardly know me,” she stammered.

  “That’s quite true,” he admitted. “And to you I am almost a complete stranger. But your father knew me years ago, and he instructed you to come to me when you were in need of some assistance, and although I did my best to help you you came over all independent and ran away—which was hardly wise of you. And now I don’t think you’re to be trusted on your own, and as a doctor can always make use of a wife”—smiling a little peculiarly—“and as a matter of fact she’s a social asset without which I’ve struggled along for several years now, ever since, in fact, my first wife died...”

  “Oh!” she said, in amazement. “I didn’t know you’d been married!”

  His smile became a little one-sided.

  “You know very little about me, don’t you?” he murmured. “And the little you do know cannot be of much assistance in enabling you to make up your mind about your own future. But although I’m not making you any declaration of violent affection”—watching her to see how the color came and went in her cheeks, and she kept her eyes rigidly lowered to the tablecloth—“I do for some reason feel an extraordinary sense of responsibility where you are concerned—possibly because I was really fond of your father—and I would like to be sure that your future path in life runs as smoothly as possible, as he would, too. Therefore I made up my mind this afternoon, while you were still asleep, that I would ask you to marry me when you woke up.”

  There were very few people having tea around them, and they had the peaceful riverside garden almost to themselves. Stacey could hear birds uttering little languid cries as they passed overhead, and from the river there was the chug-chugging of a motor-boat as it sped upstream, and the slap-slapping of oars as someone manipulated a rowing boat. The afternoon light fell goldenly about them, and Dr. Guelder’s sleek black head was burnished by it as he leaned a little towards her across the table. The Irish greyness of his eyes was intent and watchful.

  “Of course,” he suggested, “you might feel that marriage to me is too great a price to pay for your security?”

  Stacey drew a deep breath. In all her life she had known but two men intimately, and one of those had been her father. The other, now farming in Kenya, had grown up in the house next door to her in Herefordshire, and although several years older than she was he had been her most constant companion in her early teen-age days. He had taught her to swim, and to fish; had ridden with her, and impr
oved her backhand at tennis. And when he went away to the University she had missed him sorely. And she had missed him still more when he decided to join his uncle and take up farming in Kenya. But although he wrote to her and she wrote to him—occasionally—there was nothing about Dick Hatherleigh which had ever upset her thinking powers, or caused her heart to miss a beat because his glance rested upon her. His voice on the telephone had never affected her with a sensation of breathlessness; when he carelessly picked up her hand and held it for a few seconds, the action had never sent queer little shivery tremors speeding up and down her arm.

  But Martin Guelder, from the moment he had stood up to welcome her behind his large walnut desk in his Harley Street consulting room, and looked at her with his gravely searching eyes, had done all those things. Some explanation might be found in the fact that her father had had a kind of hero-worship for him, and that he had infected her with his enthusiasm, but in the days when her father had talked to her of Martin she had expected him to be much older. That he was not old—that he had so much quiet charm that it had pounded like a battery at her weak schoolgirlish defences and sent them completely endways—was something she had not been prepared for.

  And now he was asking her to marry him! That was something else she had not been prepared for, and which she could still not believe was true. Even though it was only because he was sorry for her—that he had some quixotic feeling that he ought to take her under his wing and be responsible for her, which was absurd, of course.

  And he had been married before!...

  “Miss Hunt ...?” she got out. “I thought that Miss Hunt—”

  “Miss Hunt and I have been friends for years,” he informed her quietly. “Nothing more.”

  Was that true? she wondered. Could it be true? Certainly it was not a true description of Vera Hunt’s feelings for Dr. Guelder. She would have married him at any time if only he had asked her!

  “Perhaps I’d better explain,” he said, realizing that she was struggling in a sea of utter bewilderment, surprise and confused, wrong thinking. “As I told you just now I was married several years ago, when I was much younger than I am now, and although it only lasted for a short time, and terminated tragically, it did something to me which—has made it impossible for me ever to desire a completely normal marriage again! You’re young, but not so young, I hope, that you can’t understand what I mean? And in case you do misunderstand, perhaps I'd better put it a little more clearly. I want a wife who can act the part of a hostess for me, be a companion also, if that is what she would like as well. Someone to take over the running of my house in Herefordshire, and entertain weekend guests. Be friendly to my friends, interest herself in my affairs, study my interests. And in return I promise to look after her to the utmost of my ability, safeguard her interests, too. Would that sort of thing appeal to you?”

  Stacey felt almost as if a chill breath had descended over the happiness of the afternoon and robbed it of all warmth. The bewilderment inside her subsided and became a sensation like hollowness—for several seconds she could not speak. And then she said: “But do you think I am the right type? Do you think I could possibly rise to all that you would require of me? It’s true I often acted hostess for Daddy, but then our entertainments were never on a very ambitious scale, and I am not sophisticated.”

  He interrupted her by laughing in an amused way.

  “My dear child, have you ever looked at yourself in a mirror? You would look enchanting at the head of a dinner table! But, please, don’t get the idea into your head that I propose to do nothing else but entertain my friends, and put you to the strain of being endlessly charming to them. The very first thing I want to do is to get you thoroughly fit again, restore that attractive tan you had when I first saw you, and the one or two equally attractive freckles on the tip of your nose.” He smiled at her gently, teasingly. “It’s for you to say whether you can put up with me under the conditions I’ve named, or whether, having your youth in mind, you feel that you ought to wait patiently for Mr. Right, as he is often called, to come along? After all”—with sudden gravity—“youth has a right to quite a lot, and young people sometimes fall violently in love.”

  “Never, never!” cried her heart silently, except with you!” For she knew now what it was that he had done to her. After only three meetings he had caused her to become his slave for life. She could never be more violently in love if she lived to be a hundred than she was at this moment—and it was with a man who had told her quite bluntly that he would never fall in love with her! If she married him she was to be his companion, someone to be charming to his friends, ease the path of the clever doctor still rising in his profession, and likely to be found attractive in the eyes of many women—lovely women like Vera Hunt!

  She would probably see very little of him. In any case their relationship would be exactly the same. Nothing save the fact that she was married to him, would be altered. But she would be married to him! Married to him!...

  “Well?” he said, and she thought that he regarded her with a kind of faint twinkle in his eyes.

  “I don’t know! Oh, I don’t know!” she got out, as if the words were wrung from her.

  “Then don’t think about it now,” he suggested at once, calmly. “After all, there’s no terrific hurry.”

  But he might change his mind!—the thought leapt at her—and while she was taking time making up her mind she was, or would be, perhaps, endangering his reputation. His friends probably would think it strange if she went on living in his flat, without the smallest right to do so, and where else could she go? At the moment she was hardly fit—she couldn’t even think...

  “Forget it,” he advised, as he had advised her once before. “And now I’ll get you back to Mrs. Elbe.”

  They started on the smooth run back to London, and soon the river, as a thing of beauty, was left behind. They caught glimpses of it again threading their way through Putney and Chelsea, but the dreamy peace, the moment of magic, the afternoon of unexpected pleasure was no more, and they were getting close again to the hard core of reality. In a very short while now they would arrive at his flat, he would hand her over to Mrs. Elbe, vanish again, go forth in pursuit of his own interests, and no doubt put her and her concerns right out of his mind. She had no idea when she would see him again.

  “Dr. Guelder!” she exclaimed, almost sharply, as they moved with a stream of traffic along Kensington High Street.

  “Yes?” he enquired, without turning his head. The car in front was a big and opulent American one, and it was driven by a woman who was by no means certain of her next moves. Martin Guelder was afraid she might do something erratic at any moment, and he therefore kept his eyes glued carefully ahead.

  “Dr. Guelder, I—I’ve been thinking—”

  “Have you?” Confound the woman, she had done just what he was afraid of and braked suddenly, and but for his own wariness his sleek black car would have been into hers. “What have you been thinking about?” he asked.

  “About what we were talking about—at tea time! About your asking me to marry you—”

  “Oh, yes?” Perhaps it was purely imagination on her part that something like the most fleeting smile in the world stole across his lips, leaving them serious to the point of gravity. “Oh, yes?” he repeated.

  “Well,” she said, stumbling over the words, “I think it—it was very nice of you to ask me, and and—”

  “Yes?” he prompted softly.

  “I’d like to—say yes! If you really meant it,” she added hastily, turning crimson in the seat beside him at the wheel, although he could not see it.

  “Good!” he exclaimed, and ignored her suggestion that he might have been indulging a temporary whim. “Then we’ll consider ourselves engaged, shall we? And the next step will be to get married!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  As there was nothing to wait for, the plans for getting married went ahead immediately, or as soon as Martin Guelder was able to set them
in motion.

  Mrs. Elbe was the first one who heard about them, when they returned from their afternoon beside the river, and somewhat to Stacey’s astonishment she did not appear either shocked or horrified by the suddenness of the announcement. In fact, to Stacey’s relief, she actually looked quite pleased, regarded Stacey with almost a maternal gleam of approval in her eyes, and told the doctor that it was about time he got married again, anyway, and that she was thankful he had displayed enough sense not to choose someone whose life and ways might not have fitted in so well with his own. By which Stacey could not help realizing she meant Vera Hunt! Which was another surprise for her, for she had had no idea that Vera was not a favorite with the housekeeper.

  “There are some women,” Mrs. Elbe observed rather tartly, “who are just not cut out for marriage!” And then she went away quickly out of the room before the doctor could do anything more than smile rather curiously. He looked across at Stacey with rather a quizzical gleam in his eyes.

  “Apparently Mrs. Elbe thinks you are cut out for marriage!” he remarked. “Which is fortunate, since we want to retain her services for a while at least, because I’ll have to keep on this flat even if you’ve got to live in the country.”

  “Of course,” Stacey answered, but she was not really aware of what she was saying—she felt numb and bewildered and rather frightened. Not frightened so much of what she had committed herself to in the future, but of the reason why she had allowed herself to be thus committed.

  He picked up his hat and gloves and moved towards the door.

  “Well, I’ll be going now,” he said, “and I advise you to have an early night.” He looked at her more seriously. “I think you’ve had more than enough for one day.”