Part 27

The hotel, in spite of its fine name, was a bare, dismal, ramshackle place; and the lowered lights, and uncarpeted floors gave it a peculiarly forbidding air as the doors were unlocked to admit them. Phyllis, clinging to her lover's arm, and overcome with weariness, took little heed of the arrangements being made for their accommodation. She had no idea of the Cyril Adair and wife that was being written almost under her nose. Even when she accompanied Cyril up-stairs at the heels of a yawning darky, she was equally unaware that her room was also to be his. No sleepy child at her father's side could have been more trusting.

The darky shuffled off, leaving them alone together in the big, cold bedroom. Adair took her in his arms, and kissed her, murmuring something that she only half heard and altogether failed to understand. All that she grasped was that he would return in a little while--that she was to undress, and go to bed, while he went down to get his dress-suit case. He opened her own little bag, and laughed as he arranged the contents on the chiffonier, she with blushes, struggling to restrain him. Then he was gone, and when she went to lock the door, she found that the key was gone, also.

She took off her hat, her cloak, her bodice, and with no light save a pair of wretched candles began to brush her unloosened hair. A terrible misgiving was stealing over her which she tried to allay by prolonging this familiar task. The missing key, the talk of coming back--what was she to think? A deadly fear struck at her heart. It was not all for her honor. There was more at stake than even that--the greater disaster of Adair's unworthiness. Could this be the love for which she had abandoned everything? Was it all a lie, a fraud, a trick? She suddenly seemed to lose the strength to stand, sinking into the nearest, chair, huddled and trembling.

No, no, he could not be so inconceivably base. She was wrong. His love was as real as hers. He was incapable of such coldblooded premeditation. Everything she had was his. It was not that. The thought of giving herself to him had filled her with an unreasoning joy. But to be cheated, to barter her life, her soul in exchange for his pretense--oh, she would have rather died! She would have starved for him, would have sold the clothes off her back for him, would have borne unflinchingly odium, contempt, disgrace, asking only that he love her well. But without that--! It was for him to choose; she had no resistance left; but if it were, indeed, all a lie she would kill herself the next day. One could outlive many things, but not that. There are some cheats that leave one with no redress save death.

She heard his step in the corridor; heard the door softly open; looked up with dilating eyes to learn her fate. The words Adair meant to say never were said. He stopped, staring down at her with a gaze as questioning as her own. It was one of those instants that decide eternities. All that she had thought, all that she had dreaded were articulate in the piteous face she raised to his. It was a look, which, mysteriously, for that perceptive instant was open for him to read.

"They have got me a room on the other side of the house," he said, "but I had to come back first to say good night." He ran over to her, kissed her lightly on her bared shoulder, pressed a great handful of her hair across his lips, and hurried away before temptation could overmaster him.

There was no one to be found anywhere, but he remembered the stove still burning in the bar-room, and the empty chairs gathered socially about it. Thither he made his way through the silent office and corridors, and drawing his cheap fur coat close about him, settled himself to pass what little remained of the night. There was sawdust on the floor, spittoons, scraps of sausage-rind; the air stank stalely of beer and spirits; the single gas-jet, turned very low, flickered over the nude women that decorated the mean, fly-blown walls, and flickered, too, over a man, half-slumbering in a chair, who, but glimmeringly to himself, had taken the turning road of his life.

*CHAPTER XVII*

The sensation of most runaway couples, after filling up a blank form, and having a marriage service gabbled over them by a shabby stranger in a frock-coat, is one of unmixed astonishment at the facility of the whole proceeding. A dog-license is no harder to obtain, and the formalities attending vaccination are even greater.

Phyllis emerged from the Reverend Josiah Lyell's with a ring on her finger, and a cardboard certificate on which the Almighty, angels, and forked lightning were depicted above her name and Adair's. The first discussion of their married life was what to do with this monstrosity. Phyllis was for tearing it up, but Adair, superstitiously afraid of bad luck, insisted stoutly on its being retained.

"I'll hide it at the bottom of my trunk," he said.

They returned to the carriage, which was awaiting them as composedly as though nothing in particular had happened in the ten-minute interval. Adair wished to take a drive before going back to the hotel, thinking that the air and repose would be soothing for their nerves,--but to his surprise Phyllis demurred.

"I've been married your way," she said, "now you must come and be married mine."

"Yours, Phyllis?"

"Yes, tell him to drive to a Catholic church."

He gave the order good-humoredly. "Aren't you satisfied?" he asked. "Do you want more angels and forked lightning?"

"You see, I've always been a sort of Catholic," she explained. "Not a good Catholic, but a poor little straggler, galloping on half a mile behind, like a baby sheep that's got left. I've never liked the confession part of it, but really, Cyril, there's a sort of whiff of Heaven about a Catholic church that I need occasionally. It's just as though you were awfully hungry, and went in to smell a beautiful dinner a long way off!"

"All right, Phyllis, if we are going to get married we might as well do it thoroughly," assented Adair. "If you think that beautiful dinner will help us any, let's go and smell it by all means."

As kind fate would have it, it was rather an attractive church, and better still it was altogether deserted. The autumn sunshine was streaming through stained-glass windows; a faint perfume of incense lingered in the air; the peace and solitude gave an added dignity to the altar, with its suffering pale Christ, its tall candles, its effulgent brasses gleaming in the rosy light. Phyllis made Adair kneel at her side, and holding his hand tightly in hers, prayed silently with downcast eyes, and the least quiver of a smile at the corner of her lips.

On their way out they stopped at the font. She crossed herself, touched her fingers to the water, and scattered some drops on Adair's face. "That's that you will always love me," she said, with captivating solemnity, "that's that you will always be true to me; and that's that--I may die first!"

Adair dabbled his own hand in the holy water, as though the act had a religious significance, "Oh, God," he said, looking up in all seriousness, "if there is a God--take care of this sweet wife of mine, and guard her from every harm; and if there isn't, I swear by this I am going to do it myself just as well as I know how!"

They kissed each other, and were about to go, when Phyllis noticed the poor-box. She slipped off her best ring, a little diamond such as girls are permitted to wear, and unhesitatingly dropped it in. Adair, caught by the picturesqueness of the offering, would have sacrificed his horseshoe pin had he not been prevented.

"No, that's too pretty," she cried jealously. "Haven't you something you don't like that God would?"

A little rummaging discovered a gold pencil-case which seemed to fulfill this demand--at least on Adair's side--and it forthwith followed the ring. Then they sought the open air.

"Now, at last I feel really married," said Phyllis gaily, as they climbed back into the carriage. "What a strange, dizzy, safe sort of feeling it gives one. And just think I could hug you right now before the driver, and that old lady with the basket, and that little boy blowing his baby brother's nose--and nobody could say Boo!"

She alarmed Adair by pretending to carry the hugging into effect until he tried to push her away, and told her to behave. She replied with a delighted, bubbling outcry over her new freedom: "Oh, but I'm married now, and can do just what I like, and can have breakfast in bed with you every morning, and put my shoes out with yours to be blacked, and I'm Mrs. Adair, and have a wedding-ring, and a certificate with forked lightning on it!" She exultantly popped up her feet on the seat in front, showing a shocking amount of black silk stocking with a bravado that made him grab at her skirt to pull it down; and in the ensuing romp there was more silk stocking still, and so much happy laughter on her part, and scandalized protestation on his that the driver turned round, and they were all but disgraced.

The narrowness of the escape sobered her, and for the rest of the drive she was demureness itself. What a joy it was to recline with half-shut eyes, and let the air fan away all the troubled memories of the night before! Mind and body craved repose, and mind and body found it in the cradle-like movement of the carriage. Adair was very tired, too, and willing enough to share his pretty companion's mood. Deliciously conscious of each other, though more asleep than awake, they abandoned themselves to the fresh bright morning, and breathed in deep drafts of contentment.

On their return to the hotel, the carriage stopped and Tommy Merguelis jumped up on the step. His perennial grin, and withered, foolish face was not unclouded by a certain anxiety. He dropped a bunch of roses into Phyllis' lap, with an awkward compliment which got as far as she was a rose herself, and then ended midway with a terrified giggle.