The Best Man (22 page)

The room was very still. The girl did not even sob. He turned after a moment and went back to that bowed golden head there in the deep crimson chair.

“Look here,” he said, “I know you can’t all to ever forgive me. I don’t expect it! I don’t deserve it! But please don’t feel so awfully about it. I’ll explain it all to every one. I’ll make it all right for you. I’ll take every bit of blame on myself, and get plenty of witnesses to prove all about it –”

The girl looked up with sorrow and surprise in her wet eyes.

“Why, I do not blame you,” she said, mournfully. “I cannot see how you were to blame. It was no one’s fault. It was just an unusual happening – a strange set of circumstances. I could not blame you. There is nothing to forgive, and if there were I would gladly forgive it!”

“Then what on earth makes you look so white and feel so distressed?” he asked in a distracted voice, as a man will sometimes look and talk to the woman he loves when she becomes a tearful problem of despair to his obtuse eyes.

“Oh, don’t you know?”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “You’re surely not mourning for that brute of a man to whom you had promised to sacrificed your life?”

She shook her head, and buried her face in her hands again. He could see that the tears were dropping between her fingers, and they seemed to fall red hot upon his heart.

“Then what is it?” His tone was almost sharp in its demand, but she only cried the harder. Her slender shoulders were shaking with her grief now.

He put his hand down softly and touched her bowed head.

“Won’t you tell me, Dear?” he breathed, and, stooping, knelt beside her.

The sobs ceased, and she was quite still for a moment, while his hand still lay on her hair with that gentle, pleading touch.

“It is – because you married me – in – that way – without knowing – Oh, can’t you see how terrible –”

Oh, the folly and blindness of love! Gordon got up from his knees as if she had stung him.

“You need not feel bad about that any more,” he said in a hurt tone. “Did I not tell you I would set you free at once? Surely no one in his senses could call you bound after such circumstances.”

She was very still for an instant, as if he had struck her, and then she raised her golden head, and a pair of sweet eyes suddenly grown haughty.

“You mean that I will set you free!” she said coldly. “I could not think of letting you be bound by a misunderstanding when you were under stress of mind. You were in no wise to blame. I will set you free.”

“As you please,” he retorted bitterly, turning toward the window again. “It all amounts to the same thing. There is nothing for you to feel bad about.”

“Yes, there is,” she answered, with a quick rush of feeling that broke through her assumed haughtiness. “I shall always feel that I have broken in upon your life. You have had a most trying experience with me, and you never can quite forget it. Things won’t be the same –”

She paused and the quiet tears chased each other eloquently down her face.

“No,” said Gordon still bitterly; “things will never be the same for me. I shall always see you sitting there in my chair. I shall always be missing you from it! But I am glad – glad. I would never have known what I missed if it had not been for this.” He spoke almost savagely.

He did not look around, but she was staring at him in astonishment, her blue eyes suddenly alight.

“What do you mean?” she asked softly.

He wheeled around upon her. “I mean that I shall never forget you; that I do not want to forget you. I should rather have had these two days of your sweet company, than all my lifetime in any other companionship.”

“Oh!” she breathed. “Then, why – why did you say what you did about being free?”

“I didn’t say anything about being free that I remember. It was you that said that.”

“I said I would set you free. I could not, of course, hold you to a bond you did not want -”

“But I did not say I did not want it. I said I would not hold you if you did not want to stay.”

“Do you mean if you had known me a little – that is, just as much as you know me now – and had come in there and found out your mistake before it was too late, that you would have wanted to go on with it?”

She waited for his answer breathlessly.

“If you had known me just as much as you do now, and had looked up and seen that it was I and not George Hayne you were marrying, would you have wanted to go on and be married?”

Her cheeks grew rosy and her eyes confused.

“I asked you first,” she said, with just a flicker of a smile.

He caught the shimmer of light in her eyes, and came toward her eagerly, his own face all aglow now with a dawning understanding.

“Darling,” he said, “I can go further than you have asked. From the first minute my eyes rested upon your face under that mist of white veil I wished with all my heart that I might have known you before any other man had found and won you. When you turned and looked at me with that deep sorrow in your eyes, you pledged me with every fibre of my being to fight for you. I was yours from that instant. And when your little hand was laid in mine, my heart went out in longing to have it stay in mine forever. I know now, as I did not understand then, that the real reason for my not doing something to make known my identity at that instant was not because I was afraid of the things that might happen, or any scene I might make, but because my heart was fighting for the right to keep what had been given me out of the unknown. You are my wife, by every law of heaven and earth, if your heart will but say yes. I love you, as I never knew a man could love, and yet if you  do not want to stay with me I will set you free; but it is true that I should never be the same, for I am married to you in my heart, and always shall be. Darling, look up and answer my question now.”

He stood before her with outstretched arms, and for answer she rose and came to him slowly, with downcast eyes.

“I do not want to be set free,” she said.

Then gently, tenderly, he folded his arms about her, as if she were too precious to handle roughly, and laid his lips upon hers.

It was the shrill, insistent clang of the telephone bell that broke in upon their bliss. For a moment Gordon let it ring, but its merciless clatter was not to be denied; so, drawing Celia close within his arm, he made her come with him to the ’phone.

To his annoyance, the haughty voice of Miss Bentley answered him from the little black distance of the ’phone.

His arm was about Celia, and she felt his whole body stiffen with formality.

“Oh, Miss Bentley! Good morning! Your message? Why no! Ah! Well, I have but just come in –”

A pause during which Celia, panic-stricken, handed him the paper on which she had written Julia’s message.

“Ah! Oh, yes, I have the message. Yes, it is very kind of you –” he murmured stiffly, “but you will have to excuse me. No, really. It is utterly impossible! I have another engagement – ” his arm stole closer around Celia’s waist and caught her hand, holding it with a meaningful pressure. He smiled, with a grimace toward the telephone which gladdened her heart. “Pardon me, I didn’t hear that,” he went on… “Oh, give up my engagement and come? … Not possibly!” His voice rang with a glad, decided force, and he held still closer the soft fingers in his hand… “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way about it. I certainly am not trying to be disagreeable. No, I could not come to-morrow night either… I cannot make any plan for the next few days…. I may have to leave town again…. It is quite possible I may have to return to New York. Yes, business has been very pressing. I hope you will excuse me. I am sorry to disappoint you. No, of course I didn’t do it on purpose. I shall have some pleasant news to tell you when I see you again – or –” with a glance of deep love at Celia, “perhaps I shall find means to let you know of it before I see you.”

The color came and went in Celia’s cheeks. She understood what he meant and nestled closer to him.

“No, no, I could not tell it over the ’phone. No, it will keep. Good things will always keep if they are well cared for you know. No, really I can’t. And I’m very sorry to disappoint you to-night, but it can’t be helped…. Good-by.”

He hung up the receiver with a sigh of relief.

“Who is Miss Bentley?” asked Celia, with natural interest. She was pleased that he had not addressed her as “Julia.”

“Why, she is – a friend – I suppose you would call her. She has been taking possession of my time lately rather more than I really enjoyed. Still, she is a nice girl. You’ll like her, I think; but I hope you’ll never get too intimate. I shouldn’t like to have her continually around. She –” he paused and finished, laughing – “she makes me tired.”

“I was afraid, from her tone when she ’phoned you, that she was a very dear friend - that she might be some one you cared for. There was a sort of proprietorship in her tone.”

“Yes, that’s the very word, proprietorship,” he laughed. “I couldn’t care for her. I never did. I tried to consider her in that light one day, because I’d been told repeatedly that I ought to settle down, but the thought of having her with me always was – well – intolerable. The fact is, you reign supreme in a heart that has never loved another girl. I didn’t know there was such a thing as love like this. I knew I lacked something, but I didn’t know what it was. This is greater than all the gifts of life, this gift of your love. And that it should come to me in this beautiful, unsought way seems too good to be true!”

He drew her to him once more and looked down into her lovely face, as if he could not drink enough of its sweetness.

“And to think you are willing to be my wife! My wife!” and he folded her close again.

A discreet tap on the door announced the arrival of the man Henry, and Gordon roused to the necessity of ordering lunch.

“Come in a minute, Henry,” he said. “This is my wife. I hope you will henceforth take her wished as your special charge, and do for her as you have done so faithfully for me.”

The man’s eyes shone with pleasure as he bowed low before the gentle lady.

“I is very glad to heah it, sah, and I offers you my congratchumlations, sah, and de lady, too. She can’t find no bettah man in the whole United States and Mars’ Gordon. I’s mighty glad you done got ma’ied, sah, an’ I hopes you bof have a mighty fine life.”

The luncheon was served in Henry’s best style, and his dark face shone as he stepped noiselessly about, putting silver and china and glass in place, and casting admiring glances at the lady, who stood holding the little miniature in her hand and asking questions with a gentle voice:

“Your mother, you say? How dear she is! And she died so long ago! You never knew her? Oh, how strange and sweet and pitiful to have a beautiful girl-mother like that!”

She put out her hand to his in the shelter of the deep window, and they thought Henry did not see the look and touch that passed between them; but he discreetly averted his eyes and smiled benignly at the salt-cellars and the celery he was arranging. Then he hurried out to a florist’s next door and returned with a dozen white roses, which he arranged in a queer little crystal pitcher, one of the few articles belonging to his mother that Gordon possessed. It had never been used before, except to stand on the mantel.

It was after they had finished their delightful luncheon, and Henry had cleared the table and left the room, that Gordon remarked:

“I wonder what has become of George Hayne? Do you suppose he means to try to make trouble?”

Celia’s hands fluttered to her throat with a little gesture of fear.

“Oh!” she said. “I had forgotten him! How terrible! He will do something, of course. He will do everything. He will probably carry out all his threats. How could I have forgotten! Perhaps Mamma is now in great distress. What can we do? What can I do?”

“Don’t be frightened,” he soothed her. “He cannot do anything very dreadful, and if he tries we’ll soon silence him. What he has written in those letters is blackmail. He is simply a big coward, who will run and hide as soon as he is exposed. He thought you did not understand law, and so took advantage of you. I’m sure I can silence him.”

“Oh, do you think so? But Mamma! Poor Mamma! It will kill her! And George will stop at nothing when he is crossed. I have known him too long. It will be terrible if he carries out his threat.” Tears were in her eyes, agony was in her face.

“We must telephone your mother at once and set her heart at rest. Then we can find out just what ought to be done,” said Gordon soothingly. “It was unforgivably thoughtless in me not to have done it before.”

Celia’s face was radiant at the thought of speaking to her mother.

“Oh, how beautiful! Why didn’t I think of that before? What perfectly dear things telephones are!”

With one accord, they went to the telephone table.

“Shall you call them up, or shall I?” he asked.

“You call, and then I will speak to Mamma,” she said, her eyes shining with her joy in him. “I want them to hear your voice again. They can’t help knowing you are all right when they hear your voice.”

For that, he gave her a glance very much worth having.

“Just how do you account for the face that you didn’t think I was all right yesterday afternoon? I have a very realizing sense that you didn’t. I used my voice to the best of my ability, but it did no good then.”

“Well, you see, that was different! There were those letters to be accounted for. Mamma and Jeff don’t know anything about the letters.”

“And what are you going to tell them now?”

She drew her brows down a minute and thought.

“You’d better find out how much they already know,” he suggested. “If this George Hayne hasn’t turned up yet, perhaps you can wait until you can write, or we might be able to go-up to-morrow and explain it ourselves.”

“Oh, could we? How lovely!”

“I think we could,” said Gordon. “I’m sure I can make it possible. Of course, you know a wedding journey isn’t exactly in the program of the Secret Service, but I might be able to work them for one. I surely can in a few days if this Holman business doesn’t hold me up. I may be needed for a witness. I’ll have to talk with the chief first.”