CHAPTER III

THE remainder of the night was as unique in its way as its earlier hours had been. On Mary Dunlap's return to her room she found the girl was more composed, and able to talk quietly.

"I have had time to think it all out," she said, when Mrs. Dunlap had told what she meant to tell. "Mr. Keller does not understand; his mother died when he was a child and he brought himself up, in a way. He has been a law to himself and to others for so long that he just goes ahead and does what seems best to him. I am sure he meant right. Even that strange part about registering," her face flushed as she spoke, "I can see it was done for my sake. I am so lacking in self-reliance and had been so nervous all day that he felt he could not trust me alone, and took that way of caring for me. But it is no wonder that I am nervous, for I have been doing wrong all day! I did not know it; I thought because I was of age I had a right to decide for myself but I realize that there is a higher law than just a legal one, and I am going home to mother! I am afraid she will feel that she can never trust me out of her sight again, and I do not deserve to be trusted.

"It is all very plain to me now, what I ought to do. I shall write to Mr. Keller and tell him that we must wait, and give my mother time to know him, and to learn what a truly noble man he is. Then we must try by all honorable means to win her consent to our marriage. I will not cannot be married till my mother feels right about it."

"I think that sounds like a very wise decision," said Mary Dunlap with relief in her voice. "That is what mothers were given for, to help in grave decisions. They seem to have a sort of God-given intuition about the great critical things of life. Remember that if you do not succeed in winning her over, such a mother, as a girl like you must have, surely must have wise reasons for objecting—"

"Oh, I'm sure we will succeed," interrupted the girl's voice anxiously. "My mother wants nothing in this world so much as my happiness. But if we cannot, after a reasonable time, convince her that he is worthy of her trust, why then we must just be married, without her consent. I have my own life to live—" she drew herself up proudly with a pitiful assumption of dignity—"I cannot afford to spoil my life and his for the sake of a cruel prejudice."

This last was so manifestly an echo from Mr. Keller's philosophy that the listener said not a word, in response, and the eager voice went on.

"But we must do it honestly; there shall be no slipping away as though we were ashamed! I cannot understand how I could have done such a thing! Doesn't it seem strange that I should know now just what to do, when this morning I did not at all! And so, dear friend—you will be my friend always, will you not? And mother will never know how to thank you enough for what you have done for me to-night! If you will put me on the train in the morning, as you said, I will go directly home; no matter how many broken engines hinder."

Mrs. Dunlap tried by all conceivable devices to induce her charge to get some sleep. She rang for a porter and made careful arrangements for the early train; planning the minutest details with a view to convincing the girl that she might be trusted. But there was no sleep to be had for either of them. Her charge was docile enough; she lay down obediently and closed her eyes; but she started at every sound, and imagined sounds that were not; frequently, after a few minutes of silence, she would break into eager explanations of some of Mr. Keller's movements, with a view to placing him in the best possible light.

"What is his business?" Mrs. Dunlap asked; deciding, after fruitless effort that to humor the child's restlessness was perhaps the better way.

"He is—I—don't know—!"

The sentence began eagerly, then a pause, and the half bewildered conclusion.

"He has to travel a great deal," she added; "belongs to a firm, you know; but I find that I do not know what the firm is; it seems strange that I never thought to ask him!"

"Is his home in the West?"

"Yes—no, he is there winters; summers he is East somewhere. I don't remember which city he calls 'home'; he is in New York a great deal. He really hasn't much home I presume; an unmarried man, whose parents are dead; it must be very dreary."

"Poor innocent child!" was Mrs. Dunlap's mental comment. "She really knows no more about the man than I do; I'm afraid not so much! For all that she could prove, he might be an adventurer of the sort that is careful not to have a settled home."

But all that she put into words was an earnest admonition to the girl to try to rest. For herself, she did not mean to sleep; every nerve was on the alert for a possible invasion. Who could be sure of what that defeated plotter might attempt?

But the night passed without further incident and early morning found the two at the telegraph office, from which presently two messages sped on their way. One read:

"Delayed by disabled engine. Coming on No. 2. All safe. Daisy."

It had taken nearly half an hour to compose this message satisfactorily. The other read:

"Must fail you for Wednesday. Will give you Thursday instead, if desired. Wire me at Winfield. Mary Dunlap."

Mrs. Dunlap had decided that the personal deposit of this young girl at her mother's door was more important than any other "woman's work" that she could do that day although she did not know that the man she had foiled was already seated in the smoker of the early train, waiting for her to disappear. She utterly distrusted him, and felt instinctively that he would watch his opportunity.

It was to the girl's great astonishment that, having established her charge in comfort, Mrs. Dunlap prepared to seat herself in the opposite chair.

"Oh, are you really going this way?" said the unsuspecting child. "What made me think that you were going farther West? How far do you go? To Winfield? Why, that is just beyond my station! How lovely! You will stop and see mother and let her thank you herself, won't you?"

But Mrs. Dunlap had decided that she would not. If the man were only a fool, and not a confirmed villain, and the child's heart was bound up in him, it were better for all concerned that her prejudices, as well as her knowledge of that tragic night, should never reach the mother's ears.

When the journey was over and they drove to the girl's home, she waited only to clasp hands with the sweet-faced, low-voiced, grateful woman, into whose eager arms Daisy flung herself, and to decline the pressing invitation to the home that wanted to shower kindnesses upon her; then sped on to Winfield. Arrived in Winfield, Mary Dunlap's sole errand was to read a telegram she found awaiting her, send another, and take the first train back West.

On the fourth morning following, she opened her eyes in a beautiful room in one of the elegant homes of a New York city suburb. It was still early, and she lay quiet for a few minutes, feasting her beauty-loving eyes on the evidences of abundant means and highly cultured taste spread lavishly about her. She had been too weary the night before to take in any details, except a bed. Mrs. Dunlap was accustomed to the position of honored guest in all sorts of homes. She could accommodate herself to the furnishings of the plainest home with a grace that was one of her charms; but she confessed to her very intimate friends that when "the lines fell to her in pleasant places," it always stirred an extra note of thanksgiving in her heart. There was certainly nothing lacking here; nothing to offend the most fastidious taste, or for the most exacting to desire.

The days and nights just past had been strenuous ones to this always industrious woman. There had been first the rapid journey involving another failure in appointment, for this woman who prided herself on never failing; an equally rapid return to the East, reaching her next engagement just in time; then two hours by rail to her evening appointment; and here she was taking breath in a lovely room with a whole day of rest before she had to start again!

She was in no haste to move. Her thoughtful hostess had urged her not to hasten down in the morning. "We do not breakfast until nine, and not always then if the head of the house is absent; as he is now I am sorry to say. I have always wanted him to meet you. Dear Mrs. Dunlap, I may as well confess that I am awfully proud of my husband!" The sentence had closed with an apologetic laugh.

What a transparent little lady her hostess was! She ought to be very happy, with a husband of whom she was "awfully" proud, a beautiful home crowded with all the luxuries that wealth could produce, and probably not a care in the world!

Mary Dunlap could not resist a little sigh of pity for herself; she was a lonely woman. Her husband and home and child all gone from her. She, too, had been "proud" of her husband with abundant reason; and her beautiful girl. But her girl was safe. The terrors of this awful world could not touch her.

She thought of "Daisy," and shuddered for the narrowness of her escape. Had she escaped? Would that wretch try to find her again? Perhaps she had not done her whole duty. She ought to have warned the mother. What were mothers about, to be so careless? But for that disabled engine, the child would have gone straight on her dangerous way!

Very slowly at last she went about the business of dressing, enjoying luxuries of the toilet not found ordinarily in hotels or boarding houses, and reveling in costly trifles lavishly furnished. Even in the halls she came upon treasures of art to study over, and as she lingered before them, she told herself with a half wistful smile that she must have a care lest she become envious of Mrs. Oliver.

Then she fell to moralizing. Was it probable that her hostess had her heart's desire in all things? It looked so.

There were two daughters, she had heard, who were their mother's joy and pride also. Certainly the outward appearance of the home left nothing to wish for. In such an atmosphere it was hardly possible to avoid thinking of sharply contrasted lives. Not her own, though the contrast there was marked enough. Still, she lived a busy and, she believed, a useful life, and was happy in her work. But she knew women—many of them—to whom the word "happy" could not be applied; women with warped, stunted, yes—wrecked lives!

Instantly with that word, her thoughts flew again to "Daisy," the acquaintance of a day, who had been so close to wreckage and who had made a permanent place for herself in this mother-heart. That awful man! Would she ever meet him again? If so, what would happen! What if she should meet him under circumstances that would compel her acknowledgement of him as an acquaintance? For instance, what if he should, after all, become Daisy's husband! She recoiled from the thought as she might have done from a blow; yet one could not be sure; the child had given herself unreservedly to him, unworthy of her as he seemed. Perhaps her love would redeem his life! Ought she not to hope so? Yet her very soul revolted from it!

Next, she was in the lower hall looking over the morning mail, gathering from it letters and telegrams for herself; and her hostess was coming forward to meet her, in the most charming of house gowns, with a face as bright as the morning. She was voluble in her hope that the night had been restful, and that her guest could give them the entire day.

"It is so delightful that Mr. Oliver is at home to enjoy you; I had no hope of such a thing. He came home unexpectedly on a later train than yours. He had started on a very long business trip, expecting to be gone for several months. Then, one of those unaccountable business changes came up—I never pretend to understand business—and he came back. The children and I held a jubilee over his arrival. You can't think what a trial it is to have him away so much! Fully half his time is spent in the West, or the South, or somewhere!"

At that moment the dining-room door opened, and the voluble voice flowed on. "Oh, Ralph, are you down already? Mrs. Dunlap, let me present my husband, Mr. Oliver."

And Mary Dunlap was face to face with the man she knew as "R. H. Keller"!

How they got through with that awful breakfast hour Mrs. Dunlap was never afterwards quite certain. She knew she had a sudden frightened feeling that she must not wreck that poor woman's home not yet, at least. She must take time and think what to do. She must keep up some form of appearances; she must seem to receive the man as her host; she must not say anything about the Kennard House or the interrupted journey, or the disabled engine. What could she say? She knew that she did not address him, directly, and that his wife did more than her full share of the talking, for which she mentally blessed her.

Once the wife said: "Why, Ralph, what on earth is the matter? You are as white as a ghost! Don't you feel well? I don't think you ought to start again to-night; I don't really."

He put her off with a pleasantry of some sort; asked if the girls had gone to school already, and gave careful attention to serving the guest.

Somehow the ordeal was lived through.

As they arose from the table Mrs. Oliver issued her directions.

"Now, Ralph, I want you to take Mrs. Dunlap to the library and entertain her for the next half hour. I have a tiresome committee meeting of the utmost importance that demands my personal attention; but I am going to dismiss it in half an hour, and then we'll make plans for the day. It is delightful to be able to have you both for all day!"

There was no attempt on the part of either to reply. Silently the host threw open the door of his well-equipped library, which under other circumstances Mrs. Dunlap would have found pleasure in exploring, and silently motioned her to a seat. While she sank among the cushions of a luxurious chair, he carefully closed the door; then, crossing to the doors leading to the music room, he closed them also. He seated himself but a few feet from her and spoke in the tone he had used when he asked her why she had presumed to interfere with him.

"Well. I am at your mercy! What do you propose to do?" That was what he said.

She looked steadily at him, but was speechless.

After waiting a moment he added: "I did not interfere with what you saw fit to do, by word or glance, although you must know that I could have done so had I seen fit. Why you have been silent thus far and have chosen to accept my wife's hospitality, I am at a loss to understand; unless it is in the interests of a still greater sensation. Is it your intention to tell me how you mean to proceed in the blasting of my home, or do you still prefer to work in the dark?"

The man was actually arraigning her! Or was this merely a game of bluff? What kind of woman did he take her to be! The indignant blood surged in her veins; she got out of the comfortable chair and took an uncompromising straight-backed one directly opposite his.

"Are you so accustomed to 'working in the dark' that you fancy others are doing it also?" she said, fixing him with her clear gaze. "Did you suppose that I had the slightest idea of meeting you when I came to this house and accepted its hospitality?"

His face changed suddenly and he bent forward as if to lessen the distance between them, speaking eagerly.

"Have I been mistaken in you? Mrs. Dunlap, on your honor as a woman, did you not find out my name somewhere and follow me, to this house with my discomfiture in view?"

"I certainly did not!" she answered indignantly. "Do you think I would have slept under your roof knowingly? I have not yet awakened from the daze of horror into which the sight of you threw me."

"Then I beg your pardon," he said with evident relief. "I have wronged you. Now I will literally and gratefully, if you will permit the word, throw myself on your mercy. You see what my home is, and my family I have children. You have been given some idea of what they think of me, and what I am in the main; an attentive husband and father, doing his utmost for the comfort of his home. You happen to have seen me under damning conditions, and without understanding the—the temptations. And now you have it in your power to ruin this home and blast the future of young and trusting lives; as well as break a woman's heart! Or, you have it in your power to save us all! You are a merciful woman, a philanthropist, my wife tells me, I believe you will save us. You see I am not asking justice, but pleading for mercy."

He had not moved her by a hair's breadth unless it were to increase her indignation. Her voice was steady and cold.

"Did you not have it in your power to ruin two homes, one of them widowed and fatherless, and did you spare them? You dare to talk to me of 'mercy' and 'philanthropy' when you were not willing to shelter even your own fireside!"

He dropped his eyes from her face and worked nervously with the paper cutter he held.

"You do not understand," he said. "It will be difficult to make you understand! You are one who makes no allowance for a man's temptations."

She flashed a look of scorn at him, but he did not look at her, and went on more quickly.

"I don't know what devil possessed me to do as I did that night. I did not plan it, deliberately. I did not plan any of it, it just happened. A fellow, whom we called 'the parson' in college, because he always took those parts in the plays, had just written me about a mock wedding at which he had officiated, and he was within easy reach. The truth is the girl tempted me!"

He caught the flash in her eyes just then, and heard and understood her words:

"Oh, of course; 'The woman beguiled me'!"

He pulled himself together. "I simply mean that she was—was—very bewildering, and I—" He was finding it hard to explain. He wished that the woman would look at the floor; or at something, instead of at him!

"I am going to be entirely frank with you," he said at last, with a sudden assumption of friendliness. "My wife is—we are—not congenial, not well mated; our marriage was a sort of mockery, from the first, one of convenience, one may say, on my part. I thought I ought to marry her because she cared for me, and because well, for family reasons. I never really loved with my whole soul any woman until I met Daisy; after I knew her, what seemed really wrong to me, was to continue the travesty of home life when I knew that home, to me, meant her. I intended, I fully intended, as soon as the necessary preliminaries could be managed to set myself free, in order to possess her.

"But I did not plan to injure her reputation in any way, nor indeed anyone's reputation. Divorces are common enough I am sure. The idea of running away with Daisy for a few weeks came upon me, as I said, suddenly. I was going West, very far West, and she was returning home, when I met her on the train. It was impossible for me not to see how easily we could enjoy a delightful season together, at some pleasant resort where neither of us was known—merely as good friends you understand. The marriage ceremony was to be a temporary convenience to quiet her nervousness, to be explained afterwards as a good joke. On my honor I meant nothing else."

He came to a sudden pause, for Mary Dunlap had risen, her face white with righteous indignation.

"I must interrupt you," she said. "I fail to see why you should disgrace yourself and me by exposing such details, or attempting to gloss over your sin. If you think to win sympathy thereby, you must have a strange idea of women! You to defile that sacred word 'love' in such connection! Why even a wild beast knows that love means protection, means sacrifice of self for the sake of the object loved! But you loved this child only enough to practice upon her the most cruel deception a man can offer to a woman, to blight her future, and bring despair to her family, for the sake of gratifying for a few weeks, your passion for her society!

"It is folly to suppose that you did not know what you were doing! You are neither a fool, nor a lunatic. Why do you want to grovel before me by exposing that whole vile plot? It seems amazing that you can have so soon forgotten what you said to me that night at the hotel; and how awfully your words and your position contradict those statements! Before I saw you in this house this morning, as the husband of another woman, I supposed you were a half-way decent villain, who had tried to run away with and marry the girl he fancied he loved."

He too had risen. He trembled visibly and he was white to his lips, but he tried to speak with dignity.

"I have made a mistake," he said. "I see I cannot make you understand. But I am ready to grovel still, and beg your mercy. I have not ruined her; she is free from me forever; and I am asking you to have pity on my wife and children. And since no harm can come to anyone by your silence, to spare my family. I am ready to give you my word of honor that I will never see the girl again, never attempt to communicate with her in any way."

Mrs. Dunlap's immediate response to this, brought a scarlet flush over his face and set the blood humming in his ears: "Your word of honor!"

But he was in real terror now; he had neither cowed nor deceived this woman. No sentimental twaddle about uncongenial marriages and soul-love, had done other than deepen her disgust.

He was also realizing something of the power that such a woman would have, once she exerted it, against him; and she was his wife's friend! Yet he had an instinct that he could trust her. He must beg.

"I deserve that," he said, after a breathless moment. "Well then, I will swear by all that you hold sacred never to see or try to hear from that girl again. Will you keep my secret?"

For a full minute, which must have seemed an hour to the waiting man, there was silence in that room. Then Mary Dunlap spoke.

"With conditions, yes; but you must do more than that. There are other girls in the world. I do not ask you to give me your pledged word because—" There was a single expressive gesture of her hand that consigned any "pledged" word of his to the lowest level of contempt, and she left it to complete the sentence.

"But you have chosen to speak of me as a philanthropist. Perhaps you are aware that my life is given to the protection of young innocent girls who are in danger because of such men as you; and you may possibly understand what mighty forces I can call to my aid anywhere in the civilized world, if occasion requires. In view of this, for the sake of your wife and daughters, so long as you keep your life steadily within the law that governs respectable men, and hold yourself from insulting, by your attentions, not only the girl you tried to ruin, but every other girl and woman on God's earth, I will agree to keep silence to all but the one whose affections you have stolen, and her mother! These two shall know all that I do; the girl, that she may learn to turn from the thought of you with loathing, and the mother that she may guard her child with jealous care from men like you.

"Then, I must remind you that the same forces for righteousness that stand ready to help me, are as able to keep me informed as to how steadily you adhere to the terms I have made. On these grounds do you wish mercy from me?"

The man was looking steadily at her now. Man of the world as he was, hypocrite as the life he lived had trained him to be, accustomed to sneering at women, to flirting with women, to boasting within himself that he could lead them captive at his will, he looked at this woman whose hair was silvering, and felt that she could, and would, keep her word! For a long minute, he gazed at her, as one compelled to consider her, then bowed silently, and dropped his gaze to the floor.

There were quick steps in the hall, an eager hand on the door-knob, and Mrs. Oliver fluttered in.

"It was a long half hour, wasn't it?" she began. "Those women would talk! I thought I should never get away from them. Goodness! What is the matter with you two? You look as though you were posing for high tragedy. You haven't quarreled, have you?"

Mary Dunlap arose to the occasion.

"My dear Mrs. Oliver, I have decided that I shall have to change my plans, and start for Albany by the noon train to-day. There is a matter I have concluded must have my immediate attention."

Mrs. Oliver was voluble with regrets. Such a disappointment! She had been planning for this one day for so long! And Mr. Oliver was unexpectedly here to enjoy it with them! So sorry especially to have her miss seeing their new Y. W. building that had been planned "in exact accordance with your own ideas, dear Mrs. Dunlap, and it is simply perfect. Do, Ralph, tell her how sorry you are not to be able to show her through it."

Thus urged, Mr. Oliver succeeded in finding voice to say: "Mrs. Dunlap understands, I am sure, better than I could tell her, how ready I am to do her bidding."

Mrs. Dunlap got away by the noon train and took the night-express for the West, canceling all her engagements for the week; she had more important work to look after. Not telegrams, nor long distance telephones, nor even carefully written letters could serve her now. She must go in person to try to explain, as best she might, to that dear girl who was waiting at home to hear from one to whom she had given her trust, to prove him to her mother as "good and noble!"

As she sped westward that afternoon the good woman prayed that she might be able to help save that sweet, periled life.