THE NET
"You made no plan what to do if your friend didn"t turn up?" Roger enquired. "Have you any other friends in Chicago?"
"Not one."
"Have you ever lived here, or stayed here?"
"No."
If he had now been capable of suspecting her, all his first suspicions of Miss Beverley White would have marshalled themselves in his brain.
Nothing had happened during the whole journey to justify her fantastic story of mysterious danger. As for the wonderful envelope, who could tell that it didn"t contain blank paper? But Sands had got beyond this stage. If he were a fool, he asked to be nothing better.
"Is that friend you talk of more than a friend?"
"No, only a person I trusted for reasons I can"t tell you."
"I see. And you don"t know what will become of you since he"s failed you, and you"re turned adrift in a strange town?"
"I don"t know at all. I feel stunned--as if it didn"t matter."
"It does matter to a girl like you, left alone without friends in a big city where you"re a stranger. Have you money?"
"I had enough and more than enough for my journey here, enough to pay you back for all you"ve done. I expected to get more money, and to be looked after in Chicago. Perhaps I can find work."
"Do you think after all that"s pa.s.sed I can go coolly on my way leaving you alone in Chicago? I may be a fool, but I have another proposal to make." He paused.
She looked up as if startled.
"What do you say to marrying me and going on to New York as my wife?"
For a minute he thought she was going to faint. She seemed suddenly to become limp. She swayed a little on her feet, and he caught her arm.
"You"re tired out, standing so long," he exclaimed.
"No, it"s not that. Forgive me. It was almost too much, finding out the height of your goodness. Yet, "height" is the word!"
"You"ll marry me, then!" he cried.
"No," the girl answered, "I thank you with my whole heart, but I can"t."
"Why ... why?" he stammered. "Unless you"re married already."
"I"m not married. No man has ever been anything to me. I swear that to you! But I can"t tell you any more about myself."
Roger did not speak for a minute. At last he said:
"See here, you and I have got to talk. We can"t do that where we are, with people jostling us this way and that. There"s one thing certain.
However this ends, I"m not going to leave you alone in Chicago. We"ve got plenty of time. Will you let me take you to a quiet restaurant? We can thrash matters out across the table."
"Very well," she agreed.
Roger knew Chicago. When he had arranged to have his luggage put in safe keeping, he got a taxi and took the girl to a dull but good place, sure to be practically empty at that hour. They sat down at a table in a corner, and Sands ordered an oyster stew.
"Do you dislike me?" he began his catechism. "Could you like me enough to think of me as a husband, if we"d met in a conventional, society sort of way?"
"Yes, I could. I do want you to know that. You"ve been so splendid to me."
"So far so good, but I haven"t been splendid. I"ve fallen in love with you. I haven"t been in love before ... that is, not since I was twenty.
I"ve never had time...."
"You haven"t taken much time in doing it now!" She gave a queer little laugh with a sob in it.
"I"ve learned the lesson that time isn"t the thing needed. I want you more than I ever wanted anything in my life, and I"ll take you ... as you stand."
"You haven"t stopped to think ... to count the cost," she said. "Imagine what it would be for a man like you to have a wife he knew nothing about, just a single figure cut off its background, in a picture he"d never seen. People would ask: "Who was she?" and there"d be no answer."
"They"d not ask me that," said Roger obstinately. "And I wouldn"t care what they asked each other. I"m not a society man, though I might enjoy putting my wife on the top floor. And I can do that with you if I choose! You say I"m a man of importance. I"m important enough anyhow to take the wife I want, and to put her where I want her to be."
"Yes, perhaps. But it wouldn"t be only for a little while that I"d not be allowed to tell you about myself. It would be for always. You couldn"t love me enough to be happy in spite of that."
"I could be happy," Roger insisted, "if you"d love me."
"I"d adore you! But...."
"Then there isn"t any "but". I don"t say I shouldn"t like to know all about my wife and her people and her past. Still, I"d rather have you with a future and no past than any other woman with both. I can"t do without you, and I"m going to have you ... now, to-day, as soon as I can buy a license and get a parson to make us man and wife."
"But if you should regret it?"
"I never will be sorry, if you"ll do what you just said, adore me ... half as much as I"ll adore you."
Her eyes gave him a beautiful answer. Roger Sands felt that nothing could make him regret the coming of such a romance into his hustling life.
This, then, was the story behind the sensation when Roger Sands came back from a short trip to California bringing a wife, a girl who had been a Miss Beverley White, a girl n.o.body had ever seen or heard of before.
III
THE MOUSE
On the same September day, in Moreton and Payntor"s department store in New York, might have been seen a wisp of a girl "cheeking" a manager into giving her a situation on the strength of her being Irish.
By chance, the side door of the big Sixth Avenue shop opened for Clo Riley (her true, Irish, baptismal name was Clodagh, but she didn"t think that would "go" in New York), on the day when Roger Sands" stateroom door, on the Santa Fe Limited, opened for a very different girl and for Romance. No one would have thought that they could be in the same story--the mysterious Vision and the little, sharp-faced thing from County Cork. Yet without Clo Riley it would have been another story altogether, even though, for more than six months, she and Mr. and Mrs.
Roger Sands never heard each other"s names, nor saw each other"s faces.
It was in the April after her marriage that Mrs. Sands came upon an advertis.e.m.e.nt in a newspaper. Moreton and Payntor were making a splash about their lately started department for antique furniture. They had obtained "eight magnificent, unique pieces of satinwood furniture painted by Angelica Kaufmann, bought by a representative of Moreton and Payntor, from a t.i.tled family in England."