He gave a shout that rang again from the walls.
“Do you want me?” she whispered; then smiled upon his rapture indulgently.
Rapture it was. With the word “marry,” his incredulity sped forever. But for a time he was incoherent: he leaped and hopped, spoke broken bits of words, danced fragmentarily, ate her with his eyes, partially embraced her, and finally kissed her timidly.
“Such a wedding we’ll have!” he shouted, after that.
“No!” she said sharply. “We’ll be married by a Justice of the Peace and not a soul there but us, and it will be now, or it never will be! If you don’t–-“
He swore she should have her way.
“Then we’ll be out of this town on the three o’clock train this afternoon,” she said. She went on with her plans, while he, growing more accustomed to his privilege, caressed her as he would. “You shall have your way,” she said, “in everything except the wedding-journey. That’s got to be a long one—I won’t come back here till people have forgotten all about this Corliss mix-up. I’ve never been abroad, and I want you to take me. We can stay a long, long time. I’ve brought nothing—we’ll get whatever we want in New York before we sail.”
He agreed to everything. He had never really hoped to win her; paradise had opened, dazing him with glory: he was astounded, mad with joy, and abjectly his lady’s servant.
“Hadn’t you better run along and get the license?” she laughed. “We’ll have to be married on the way to the train.” “Cora!” he gasped. “You angel!”
“I’ll wait here for you,” she smiled. “There won’t be too much time.”
He obtained a moderate control of his voice and feet. “Enfield—that’s my cashier—he’ll be back from his lunch at one-thirty. Tell him about us, if I’m not here by then. Tell him he’s got to manage somehow. Good-bye till I come back Mrs. Trumble!”
At the door he turned. “Oh, have you—you–-” He paused uncertainly. “Have you sent Richard Lindley any word about–-“
“Wade!” She gave his inquiry an indulgent amusement. “If I’m not worrying about him, do you think you need to?”
“I meant about–-“
“You funny thing,” she said. “I never had any idea of really marrying him; it wasn’t anything but one of those silly half-engagements, and–-“
“I didn’t mean that, “he said, apologetically. “I meant about letting him know what this Pryor told you about Corliss, so that Richard might do something toward getting his money back. We ought to{}
“Oh, yes,” she said quickly. “Yes, that’s all right.”
“You saw Richard?”
“No. I sent him a note. He knows all about it by this time, if he has been home this morning. You’d better start, Wade. Send a messenger to our house for my bag. Tell him to bring it here and then take a note for me. You’d really better start—dear!”
“CORA!” he shouted, took her in his arms, and was gone. His departing gait down the corridor to the elevator seemed, from the sounds, to be a gallop.
Left alone, Cora wrote, sealed, and directed a note to Laura. In it she recounted what Pryor had told her of Corliss; begged Laura and her parents not to think her heartless in not preparing them for this abrupt marriage. She was in such a state of nervousness, she wrote, that explanations would have caused a breakdown. The marriage was a sensible one; she had long contemplated it as a possibility; and, after thinking it over thoroughly, she had decided it was the only thing to do. She sent her undying love.
She was sitting with this note in her hand when shuffling footsteps sounded in the corridor; either Wade’s cashier or the messenger, she supposed. The door-knob turned, a husky voice asking, “Want a drink?” as the door opened.
Cora was not surprised—she knew Vilas’s office was across the hall from that in which she waited—but she was frightened.
Ray stood blinking at her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, at last.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It is probable that he got the truth out of her, perhaps all of it. That will remain a matter of doubt; Cora’s evidence, if she gave it, not being wholly trustworthy in cases touching herself. But she felt no need of mentioning to any one that she had seen her former lover that day. He had gone before the return of Enfield, Mr. Trumble’s assistant, who was a little later than usual, it happened; and the extreme nervousness and preoccupation exhibited by Cora in telling Enfield of his employer’s new plans were attributed by the cashier to the natural agitation of a lady about to wed in a somewhat unusual (though sensible) manner.
It is the more probable that she told Ray the whole truth, because he already knew something of Corliss’s record abroad. On the dusty desk in Ray’s own office lay a letter, received that morning from the American Consul at Naples, which was luminous upon that subject, and upon the probabilities of financial returns for the investment of a thousand dollars in the alleged oil-fields of Basilicata.
In addition, Cora had always found it very difficult to deceive Vilas: he had an almost perfect understanding of a part of her nature; she could never far mislead him about herself. With her, he was intuitive and jumped to strange, inconsistent, true conclusions, as women do. He had the art of reading her face, her gestures; he had learned to listen to the tone of her voice more than to what she said. In his cups, too, he had fitful but almost demoniac inspirations for hidden truth.
And, remembering that Cora always “got even,” it remains finally to wonder if she might not have told him everything at the instance of some shadowy impulse in that direction. There may have been a luxury in whatever confession she made; perhaps it was not entirely forced from her, and heaven knows how she may have coloured it.
