Free The Best Man by Grace Livingston Hill Page A

he’s got to spend the rest of his days in Chicago either. He says there might something turn up that would make it possible for him to change all his plans. Isn’t that great?”
    Celia tried to look up and smile through her tears, while the man outside studied the situation a moment in perplexity and then strolled back to watch Gordon and the elder woman.
    “You will be good to my little girl,” he heard the woman’s voice pleading. “She has always been guarded, and she will miss us all, even though she has you.” The voice went through Gordon like a knife. To stand much more of this and not denounce himself for a blackguard would be impossible. Neither could he keep his hat on in the presence of this wonderful motherhood, a motherhood that appealed to him all the more that he had never known a mother of his own, and had always longed for one.
    He put up his hand and lifted his hat slightly, guarding as much as possible his own face from the view of the man on the station platform, who was still walking deliberately, considerately, up and down, often passing near enough to hear what they were saying. In this reverent attitude, Gordon said, as though he were uttering a sacred vow:
    “I will guard her as if she were -  as if I were – as if I were – you” – then he paused a moment and added solemnly, tenderly – “Mother!”
    He wondered  it were not desecration to utter such words when all the time he was utterly unable to perform them in the way in which the mother meant! “Impostor!” was the word which rang in his ears now. The clamor about being hindered had ceased, for he was doing his best, and not letting even a woman’s happiness stand in the way of his duty.
    Yet his heart had dictated the words he had spoken, while his mind and judgment were busy with his perilous position. He could not gainsay his heart, for he felt that in every way he could he would guard and care for the girl who was to be in his keeping at least for a few minutes until he could contrive some way to get her back to her friends without him.
    The whistle of the train was sounding now, and the brakemen were shouting, “All aboard!”
    He helped the frail little elderly woman down the steps, and she reached up her face to kiss him. He bent and took the caress, the first time that a woman’s lips had touched his face since he was a little child.
    “Mother, I will not let anything harm her,” he whispered, and she said:
    “My boy, I trust you!”
    Then he put her into the care of her strong young son, swung upon the train as the wheels began to move, and hurried back to the bride. On the platform, walking beside the train, he still saw the man. Going to the weeping girl, Gordon, stooped over her gently, touched her on her shoulder, and drew the window shade down. The last face he saw outside was the face of the baffled man, who was turning back, but what for? Was he going to report to others, and would there perhaps be another stop before they left the city, where officers or detectives might board the train? He ought to be ready to get off and run for his life if there was. There seemed no way but to fee the porter to look after his companion, and leave her, despicable as it seemed! Yet his soul of honor told him he could never do that, no matter what was at stake.
    Then, without warning a new situation was thrust upon him. The bride, who had been standing with bowed head and with her handkerchief up to her eyes, just as her brother had left her, tottered and fell into his arms, limp and white. Instantly all his senses were called into action, and he forgot the man on the platform, forgot the possible next stop in the city, and the explanation he had been about to make to the girl; forgot even the importance of his mission, and the fact that the train he was on was headed toward Chicago, instead of Washington; forgot everything but the fact that the loveliest girl he had ever seen, with the saddest look a human face might