CHAPTER XIII

DOWN in the street Marguerite almost gave way.

A glance at her face showed Nelson that she was almost at the limit of her strength. He summoned a taxi and put her in.

"Would you like to go to the hotel and lie down a while?" he asked tenderly.

"Oh, no," she said shrinking toward him, "I don't want to be alone now. I can't bear it. I must have someone who belongs. Let's go to some quiet place where we can sit down a little while, or walk where there won't be so many people."

She sank back in the seat and closed her eyes, and Whitney gave the order, "Drive to the Park, and drive around till I tell you to stop."

He got into the taxi, pulled down the shades, and drew her head gently over till it rested on his shoulder.

"Now," said he, "just rest there a few minutes and get calm."

There were hot tears running down her white cheeks.

"That's all right, dear," he said as if he were talking to a little child. "Cry as hard as you can. It'll do you good!"

There was a lilt in his voice. He was thinking how she had said she wanted to be with somebody who "belonged." Then in her soul she felt that he belonged after all.

Marguerite let the tears have their way for a minute or two, and then she sobbed out softly:

"But you don't know what it's all about. I—ought—to—explain."

"Explain, nothing!" said Nelson comfortingly. "I know all about it."

"Oh! How did you know?" she asked with a perplexed frown, "Did mother tell you?"

"Never a word," said the young man taking out a big white handkerchief that smelled of clover in summer, and unfolding it. "Can't you give me credit for having eyes? When you love somebody, you understand."

He lifted the girl's hot tear-wet face and gently wiped it with the cool handkerchief.

She felt as if she were a little girl being comforted.

"Oh, Nelson, you've always been wonderful! And—I—But you won't feel that way about me any more when you know everything. I've been—so—silly—! And wicked, Nelson! I've been terribly wicked. Oh—" she shuddered,—"to think that I—should have got into an awful mess like that! Oh, I can't ever stand myself again! How can I live? To think—"

"See here, Marguerite, you're not to think anything about it now. You are just to rest, and get over the shock. And by and bye when you are rested, we'll talk it all out."

"But I want to get it over with first," said Marguerite sitting up and trying to stop the tears with the big handkerchief. "Indeed I can't rest till you know what a fool I've been."

"All right," said Nelson, "you've been a fool, have you? Well, I love you anyway. Have you had any breakfast? No, I thought not. Well, neither have I. What if we stop somewhere and get some?"

"But I can't go anywhere with my eyes all red," objected the girl, dabbing away at them and looking as pretty as a picture even with a red nose, and her lashes all wet.

"That's all right," said the young man easily, "we're going to get out pretty soon and walk around the park a little. I think we'll find a fountain or a spring or a lake or something wet, and we'll mop up and get cooled off and then we'll go and get fed."

Marguerite giggled hysterically.

"You are always so good," she murmured, and then refinished it, "so—dear!"

He stooped over and kissed her gravely on the forehead.

"Thank you for that, little one. Now, are you ready to get out and find that fountain?"

"Wait," said the girl sitting up, her face clouded with trouble again. "Wait, Nelson, we can't go on like this. We can't even be friends again till I tell you everything. It—chokes me!"

"Out with it, then!" said the young man calmly, "but make it snappy. Make a clean breast of it in three sentences."

"Oh, Nelson, I fell in love with that man—a married man!" She lifted her shamed face and looked at him through her tears.

"That's number one," said Nelson, unperturbed.

"I started to run away with him and get married, without telling Mother," she burst forth with a fresh rush of tears.

"Number two," counted Nelson.

"And—and—I've been awful to Mother, and to that Mrs. Dunlap—" she choked out, "and—and—to God! I almost lost my senses!"

"I inferred as much. Now, is that all, little sweetheart? And shall we get out and doll up for breakfast?"

She buried her face in the folds of the wet handkerchief once more, and from its depths murmured: "Oh, Nelson, you always did take the ache out of things!"

"That's what I'm for," grinned Nelson delightedly, "and I always intend to keep on doing it. You know you're mine, little girl, have been ever since we were children, and I don't intend anything to hurt you any more than I can possibly help. Of course, if you get sick—" he smiled, "mentally sick, or physically sick, or spiritually sick, I'll just have to stand by and help till you get well again, but you're mine, little girl. I want that distinctly understood. Now, shall we get out and walk a little?"

"But Nelson—you mustn't. I'm not worthy of a devotion like that—I couldn't let you—"

"We're getting out, driver," Nelson tapped on the glass.

He helped her out and paid the fare, and while Marguerite stood still in the bright sunshine at the entrance to a Park pathway, the cool breeze blowing on her hot cheeks and forehead, her face a little turned away lest the cabman should see that she had been crying, suddenly a great burden seemed to roll from her.

She had expected to find herself desperate, agonized, unable to live longer, when she got away from that terrible office where she had undergone such awful revelations; but suddenly it seemed to her a great relief. The fearful responsibilities of life that a day ago had lain upon her heart with deathlike heaviness, were gone. Life had been settled for her, and her path diverted from a dark and perilous way, into brightness and sunshine again.

The only thing that hung about and troubled her was her own shame. Her part in the terrible drama that had just been played to the finish. Her foolishness and gullibility, her readiness to fall for the handsome eyes of a man of the world, whose flattery had been merely used for his own passing amusement. She, Marguerite Sheldon, with a long line of respectable and noble ancestors, with a heritage of Christian training and tradition, with a mother such as hers had been, and a father whose memory was enshrined forever in her heart! To think that she had been so easy to deceive!

She started suddenly at the thought of how her heart was arraigning the man who had been her lover—almost her husband, but a few brief days ago! Three hours ago she would have sworn to anyone who asked that she loved him with her whole soul; that life would be worthless without him; that she would cling to him with her last breath though she were separated from him for years; that she would love him and believe him, yes and even forgive him no matter what others said, no matter what he had done.

And now in a few short minutes, the cloak of illusion had been torn from him, and left his shame naked to her view; left him without a charm or virtue; shown his love to be a mere worthless pretense, for how could he possibly love her when he had so deceived her? How could he dare bring her a love so dishonored by his own broken, worse than broken vows? For she was not one of those girls who feel it a fine feather to have won for herself a man who belongs to another.

She shivered as she remembered the way he had said: "My wife," and, "my daughters," in that accustomed married way. If she had heard nothing else but that it would have convinced her. And sharply to her memory came her own words to Mrs. Dunlap, "Unless I can hear him say with his own lips—"

Well, she had heard him! How terrible it had been! Hot irons had seared her heart, and she would never, never forget!

As she turned toward Nelson, she glanced down, and there in the path behind him she caught the gleam of a bit of metal, gold or silver shining in the sun. It proved to be only a bit of foil wrapping from candy or gum that someone had flung down carelessly in passing. But with the unexplained whimsicality of such little inanimate things, it took for the moment the form of a tiny trinket in likeness to a gold and platinum charm that the one-time Rufus Keller had worn on his watch chain. During those intimate days she had more than once toyed with it lovingly, pleased to think such was her privilege. She had even worn it about her neck on a little gold chain for a few days, till alarmed lest her mother should see it, she had given it back for the time.

Suddenly it came to her that he had worn it that very morning. She had noticed its gleam as he turned away with that guilty look, that look that she never would forget. The look that had torn from her heart the last shred of respect, and what she had once thought was love for this man. And the little gleaming trinket had twinkled wickedly at her as he went, and stabbed her with the things that she once had held so dear. Stabbed her as when a thorn that has bruised the bleeding flesh is torn away and can hurt no more.

She caught her breath in a sob as Nelson came up with her and slipped his hand within her arm steadying her.

"Oh, how can I ever live? How can I ever, ever stand it?" she gasped.

"Poor child!" said Nelson sadly, "Do you love him as much as that?"

"Oh, no! No! Not now!" she cried. "That is all gone! But my self-respect is gone too! How can one live without self-respect?"

"That will come back again!" said Nelson Whitney with a ring in his voice. Oh, it was good to hear her say she no longer cared!

She was quiet for several minutes, and he watched her as they walked along deeper into the park. Then she lifted her face like a rain-drenched flower.

"Nelson, you are wonderful!" she said. "I don't—know—what I should do—without you!"

"Well, you don't have to do without me, thank God!" said Nelson. "I suppose this is why He sent me down here."

She looked up with quick inquiry.

"How did you come, Nelson? Was it just chance?"

"Nothing in this world is chance, is it, Daisy? But this certainly wasn't, anyway. Why, you see I went to the house to get that list you promised—"

"Oh!" said the girl. "I never thought of it again."

"Well, it's of no consequence now," he grinned, "I made up one instead and ordered the things. You'll have to use what there is, or get more. However, when Mary and I started to look for the list there was your note to your mother right on the floor by the stairs in the lower hall. How it got there I don't know, but as Mary was upstairs and I hadn't much time, and the note was in your handwriting, I picked it up and read it. Of course I hadn't gone far before I discovered it wasn't the list, but I couldn't let it go then for I had caught a word or two that showed me you were in danger, and that your mother must be somewhere in sorrow hunting for you, so I put it in my pocket as Mary came down stairs and took it away with me. If you ask me I think the Lord left that note there for me to read. I thought you belonged enough to me to give me the right to read it."

Marguerite with reddening cheeks and shamed eyes was trying to recall what she had said in that mad hasty note she had left for her mother when she hurried to the midnight train.

"The rest was a cinch of course," went on Nelson. "I had the address to which you were going in your own handwriting. I had only to meet you at the train in New York as it came in, if I could get there ahead of you. Or, failing in that, as I did, I had the second chance of catching you at the office before you went off to marry that villain."

Marguerite's shamed face did not lift, but a little quiver went through her slight frame.

"But—how did you get here in time?" she asked. "Why, that must have been rather late in the morning when you found that note. Of course I knew there was an early morning train and that Mother would probably take that, but I had hoped to have everything straightened out before she came. But the only other train after you found out is a local, and you couldn't possibly have got here even yet unless you flew. Are you a mystery man?"

"That's exactly what I did. I flew here," said Nelson.

"What do you mean?" she asked lifting wondering eyes that seemed to have forgotten their trouble for the moment. "Don't tease me, please. I'm so tired!" And she drooped upon his arm.

"Poor little girl! I'm forgetting all you've gone through. We'll find that water, and then go for something to eat. If I remember, it was down this path. I came here once three years ago, and thought how some day I would perhaps bring you."

A quick turn brought them to a spring gurgling in a granite basin, and Marguerite dashed the water in her face and dried it on another big clean handkerchief that Nelson brought forth from a capacious pocket.

"Do you have an unlimited supply of these?" she asked as she emerged from its fragrant folds gratefully, refreshed in spite of herself.

"Very nearly!" he smiled. "Now come, and we will go and find something to eat."

"But you haven't told me what you mean by saying you flew here." He noticed that her voice was almost cheerful again.

"Just that," he said laughing, "I flew. It's the first time in my life, but I would have enjoyed it if I hadn't been so worried about you."

Then as her eyes looked still mystified, he explained.

"I have a friend who has been coaxing me to fly with him for months and I never seemed to have time. He had oodles of money, and no end of time, and so I just made good a promise I had given him once, and called him up. He was game all right, said of course he was going to New York in a couple of hours, and so we came. We got here sometime before your train came in. By the way, why didn't you come on it?"

"I did," she said sadly, "but I got off at the wrong station, something they called Manhattan Transfer. I had to wait ages before another came along."

"Manhattan Transfer! And you were knocking around that desolate place alone at that time of night? Well, I'll say your angels must have had their hands full taking care of you yesterday. They must be all worn out. I guess that's why I have the job for a little while now. Come, here's a taxi!"

She flashed him a faint little flicker of a smile and he helped her into the cab with a lighter heart. At least the days of reticence and distance were over between them. No more reservations, no more holding aloof. She was confiding in him as she used to do. One couldn't expect more than that, so soon.

They went to a quiet tea room. Nelson seemed to know just how to manage everything, seemed to know without asking his way anywhere. He put her in a seat where she was sheltered, and he ordered the things he knew from long years of association that she liked. Deftly, unobtrusively, he drew her attention away from herself, and the tragic happenings of the last few days, tempted her to eat, provoked her to laugh. He described his first sensations of flying, telling little anecdotes of his friend the aviator when they were both together in France, telling a joke he had heard the day before, calling her attention to a beautiful white kitten that came purring in to be stroked and fed tidbits.

It was nearly three o'clock when they had finished the meal. The color was stealing faintly back to the girl's lips and cheeks, and the terror fading out of her eyes.

"Now," said Nelson consulting his watch, "it's three minutes to three. What do you want to do? Shall we make good our word and go to the Tomb and the Museum, or shall we save that for another day and go back to the hotel and let you get a good rest?"

"Oh," said Marguerite, shrinking suddenly, the color receding from her lips, the terror coming back to her eyes. "Oh, I can't go back—yet! But don't let me detain you—I'll—I'll just wander around a little—I'll go—shopping!" she ended with an attempt at briskness in her voice. "You've been awfully good."

"Now, look here, Marguerite, haven't I known you too long and loved you too well, for you to get off any bunk like that on me?" he asked laughing. "I'm here to take care of you, and what you want to do is what I want to do. What I meant is, are you too tired to take on sight seeing or are you really interested? It occurred to me that we weren't either of us in a state to get much intellectual good out of either a tomb or a museum, but perhaps I'm mistaken. If you want to, we'll go. But if you are not particular which day we go tombing, suppose we take a lighter expedition. I'll tell you what would just suit me. I'd like to take you down to Tiffany's and buy you the prettiest diamond ring we can find."

Marguerite started back in her chair.

"Oh, Nelson! What do you mean?"

Her face was a curious study of tenderness and fear.

"I mean just that, Daisy. I think it's high time you had some kind of a safeguard to wear. I've loved you too long and known you too well, to let you drift around the world unprotected any longer."

"But—Nelson—"

"Yes, I know—you want to tell me that you don't love me—that you couldn't possibly love one man when you've just got over caring for another, and all that—but I'm going to do this anyway. The chances are that you may some day find out you do care a little and then everything will be all right. But if you don't, why, there are such things as broken engagements.

"You don't have to marry me if you find out I'm a villain, or that you love somebody else better. But you do have to wear my ring for a while anyway. You're not going back home without it, I'll tell the world. Nobody is going to have a chance, not that dirty crook of a Keller anyway, to say that he threw you over. You're going home engaged to me, Marguerite Sheldon, whatever you do with me afterward, you may as well understand that I have the upper hand now, and you're going to have a ring, right now!

"You can take it for all the love I have in the world, if you're willing, or you can take it for just a means of protection for the time being if that suits you any better, but somehow I'm going to put my tag on my property. Until you've told me that you out and out can't love me ever, I'm out to see that you're known as belonging to me."

There was such quiet strength and tenderness in the way he said these words, so low that they could not possibly reach other ears than her own, so full of real feeling and earnestness, that she could not turn away from, nor laugh it off. It choked her to think how great and tender he was to her.

"Nelson, you're sorry for me and you're dear, but you don't need to go to such lengths," she began helplessly.

"Marguerite," he rebuked her, "that's beneath you. You know I never lie! You know I would not say it if it were not the dearest wish of my heart. You know I've loved you ever since I can remember."

She was still a long time, the sweet color coming into her cheeks; lifting she eyes at last she said:

"Nelson, forgive me I shouldn't have said that. I know what you've always been. But I didn't know till to-day quite how wonderful you were. I believe you, and I think it's the greatest thing in the world you have done for me. Your love is the greatest thing the world can ever give me, and I'm sure I don't know what I would ever be without you. I would tell you that I love you too, only I've been so many kinds of a fool the last year and a half that I don't even trust myself to say it. It seems cowardly of me to creep into the refuge you offer me, when I have so little to give. A threadbare love that was thrown away on an old married man with grown daughters!"

His face grew strangely tender.

"That's all right, little girl, I understand what you've been through. It's no wonder you distrust yourself, but I trust you, when you get rid of the mists and get back to yourself. We'll strike square with each other and you can trust me. I won't ask you to marry me till you're ready, and not then if you don't love me enough to be happy with me, better than any other man on earth—but I do ask you to wear my ring home and let it be a shelter to you, in any complex circumstances that this situation may happen to bring about."

She was still a long time, drawing little patterns with the tip of her spoon on the table cloth. At last she lifted hesitating eyes half shamed.

"Nelson—have you thought what Mother will think if I do this? Off with the old love and on with the new? Won't Mother be more horrified than ever at me? Won't she think I'm utterly false at heart?"

"Your mother will simply jump for joy," said Nelson Whitney solemnly. "Take it from me. It would be the happiest moment of her life if she could see my ring on your hand and know you wanted it there."

"So soon—after—"

"The sooner the quicker!" said Nelson, wrinkling his face into his nicest smile. "Come! Let's go!"

She followed him in a tumult of joy and doubt. Could it be right for her to be happy like this, when only a few hours ago she had been—

But Nelson was summoning another taxi, and in a few whirls they were entering the great Fifth Avenue store.

When she came out again a little while later, after going the beautiful rounds among priceless jewels and fragile glass that looked like the breath of a frozen flower, she was wearing his ring on her hand, and a soft depth of joy in her eyes that was good to see.

"And now," said Nelson, as he summoned another taxi, "I think we had better go and find Mother, and tell her all about it, don't you? It seems to me she has suffered about long enough."