Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “Thank heaven for that!” cried Laura.

  “I’m going to take care of myself,” Cora went on rapidly. “I’m going to get out of the mess I’m in, and you’ve got to let me do it my own way. I’ll send you a note from downtown. You see that the messenger — —”

  She was at the door, but Laura caught her by the sleeve, protesting and beseeching.

  Cora turned desperately. “See here. I’ll come back in two hours and tell you all about it. If I promise that, will you promise to send me the bag by the — —”

  “But if you’re coming back you won’t need — —”

  Cora spoke very quietly. “I’ll go to pieces in a moment. Really, I do think I’d better jump out of the window and have it over.”

  “I’ll send the bag,” Laura quavered, “if you’ll promise to come back in two hours.”

  “I promise!”

  Cora gave her a quick embrace, a quick kiss, and, dry-eyed, ran out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house.

  She walked briskly down Corliss Street. It was a clear day, bright noon, with an exhilarating tang in the air, and a sky so glorious that people outdoors were continually conscious of the blue overhead, and looked up at it often. An autumnal cheerfulness was abroad, and pedestrians showed it in their quickened steps, in their enlivened eyes, and frequent smiles, and in the colour of their faces. But none showed more colour or a gayer look than Cora. She encountered many whom she knew, for it was indeed a day to be stirring, and she nodded and smiled her way all down the long street, thinking of what these greeted people would say to-morrow. “I saw her yesterday, walking down Corliss Street, about noon, in a gray suit and looking fairly radiant!” Some of those she met were enemies she had chastened; she prophesied their remarks with accuracy. Some were old suitors, men who had desired her; one or two had place upon her long list of boy-sweethearts: she gave the same gay, friendly nod to each of them, and foretold his morrow’s thoughts of her, in turn. Her greeting of Mary Kane was graver, as was aesthetically appropriate, Mr. Wattling’s engagement having been broken by that lady, immediately after his drive to the Country Club for tea. Cora received from the beautiful jilt a salutation even graver than her own, which did not confound her.

  Halfway down the street was a drug-store. She went in, and obtained appreciative permission to use the telephone. She came out well satisfied, and went swiftly on her way. Ten minutes later, she opened the door of Wade Trumble’s office.

  He was alone; her telephone had caught him in the act of departing for lunch. But he had been glad to wait — glad to the verge of agitation.

  “By George, Cora!” he exclaimed, as she came quickly in and closed the door, “but you can look stunning! Believe me, that’s some get-up. But let me tell you right here and now, before you begin, it’s no use your tackling me again on the oil proposition. If there was any chance of my going into it which there wasn’t, not one on earth — why, the very fact of your asking me would have stopped me. I’m no Dick Lindley, I beg to inform you: I don’t spend my money helping a girl that I want, myself, to make a hit with another man. You treated me like a dog about that, right in the street, and you needn’t try it again, because I won’t stand for it. You can’t play me, Cora!”

  “Wade,” she said, coming closer, and looking at him mysteriously, “didn’t you tell me to come to you when I got through playing?”

  “What?” He grew very red, took a step back from her, staring at her distrustfully, incredulously.

  “I’ve got through playing”, she said in a low voice. “And I’ve come to you.”

  He was staggered. “You’ve come — —” he said, huskily.

  “Here I am, Wade.”

  He had flushed, but now the colour left his small face, and he grew very white. “I don’t believe you mean it.”

  “Listen,” she said. “I was rotten to you about that oil nonsense. It was nonsense, nothing on earth but nonsense. I tell you frankly I was a fool. I didn’t care the snap of my finger for Corliss, but — oh, what’s the use of pretending? You were always such a great `business man,’ always so absorbed in business, and put it before everything else in the world. You cared for me, but you cared for business more than for me. Well, no woman likes that, Wade. I’ve come to tell you the whole thing: I can’t stand it any longer. I suffered horribly because — because — —” She faltered. “Wade, that was no way to win a girl.”

  “Cora!” His incredulity was strong.

  “I thought I hated you for it, Wade. Yes, I did think that; I’m telling you everything, you see just blurting it out as it comes, Wade. Well, Corliss asked me to help him, and it struck me I’d show that I could understand a business deal, myself. Wade, this is pretty hard to say, I was such a little fool, but you ought to know it. You’ve got a right to know it, Wade: I thought if I put through a thing like that, it would make a tremendous hit with you, and that then I could say: `So this is the kind of thing you put ahead of me, is it? Simple little things like this, that I can do, myself, by turning over my little finger!’ So I got Richard to go in — that was easy; and then it struck me that the crowning triumph of the whole thing would be to get you to come in yourself. That would be showing you, I thought! But you wouldn’t: you put me in my place — and I was angry — I never was so angry in my life, and I showed it.” Tears came into her voice. “Oh, Wade,” she said, softly, “it was the very wildness of my anger that showed what I really felt.”

  “About — about me?” His incredulity struggled with his hope. He stepped close to her.

  “What an awful fool I’ve been,” she sighed.

  “Why, I thought I could show you I was your equal! And look what it’s got me into, Wade!”

  “What has it got you into, Cora?”

  “One thing worth while: I can see what I really am when I try to meet you on your own ground.” She bent her head, humbly, then lifted it, and spoke rapidly. “All the rest is dreadful, Wade. I had a distrust of Corliss from the first; I didn’t like him, but I took him up because I thought he offered the chance to show you what I could do. Well, it’s got me into a most horrible mess. He’s a swindler, a rank — —”

  “By George!” Wade shouted. “Cora, you’re talking out now like a real woman.”

  “Listen. I got horribly tired of him after a week or so, but I’d promised to help him and I didn’t break with him; but yesterday I just couldn’t stand him any longer and I told him so, and sent him away. Then, this morning, an old man came to the house, a man named Pryor, who knew him and knew his record, and he told me all about him.” She narrated the interview.

  “But you had sent Corliss away first?” Wade asked, sharply.

  “Yesterday, I tell you.” She set her hand on the little man’s shoulder. “Wade, there’s bound to be a scandal over all this. Even if Corliss gets away without being arrested and tried, the whole thing’s bound to come out. I’ll be the laughing-stock of the town — and I deserve to be: it’s all through having been ridiculous idiot enough to try and impress you with my business brilliancy. Well, I can’t stand it!”

  “Cora, do you — —” He faltered.

  She leaned toward him, her hand still on his shoulder, her exquisite voice lowered, and thrilling in its sweetness. “Wade, I’m through playing. I’ve come to you at last because you’ve utterly conquered me. If you’ll take me away to-day, I’ll marry you to-day!”

  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, o
r 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. There was an elusive, quiet satisfaction somewhere in her subsequent expression; it lurked deep under the surface of the excitement with which she talked to Enfield of her imminent marital abduction of his small boss.

  Her agitation, a relic of the unknown interview just past, simmered down soon, leaving her in a becoming glow of colour, with slender threads of moisture brilliantly outlining her eyelids. Mr. Enfield, a young, well-favoured and recent importation from another town, was deliciously impressed by the charm of the waiting lady. They had not met; and Enfield wondered how Trumble had compassed such an enormous success as this; and he wished that he had seen her before matters had gone so far. He thought he might have had a chance. She seemed pleasantly interested in him, even as it was — and her eyes were wonderful, with their swift, warm, direct little plunges into those of a chance comrade of the moment. She went to the window, in her restlessness, looking down upon the swarming street below, and the young man, standing beside her, felt her shoulder most pleasantly though very lightly — in contact with his own, as they leaned forward, the better to see some curiosity of advertising that passed. She turned her face to his just then, and told him that he must come to see her: the wedding journey would be long, she said, but it would not be forever.

  Trumble bounded in, shouting that everything was attended to, except instructions to Enfield, whom he pounded wildly upon the back. He began signing papers; a stenographer was called from another room of his offices; and there was half an hour of rapid-fire. Cora’s bag came, and she gave the bearer the note for Laura; another bag was brought for Wade; and both bags were carried down to the automobile the bridegroom had left waiting in the street. Last, came a splendid cluster of orchids for the bride to wear, and then Wade, with his arm about her, swept her into the corridor, and the stirred Enfield was left to his own beating heart, and the fresh, radiant vision of this startling new acquaintance: the sweet mystery of the look she had thrown back at him over his employer’s shoulder at the very last. “Do not forget me!” it had seemed to say. “We shall come back — some day.”

  The closed car bore the pair to the little grim marriage-shop quickly enough, though they were nearly run down by a furious police patrol automobile, at a corner near the Richfield Hotel. Their escape was by a very narrow margin of safety, and Cora closed her eyes. Then she was cross, because she had been frightened, and commanded Wade cavalierly to bid the driver be more careful.

  Wade obeyed sympathetically. “Of course, though, it wasn’t altogether his fault,” he said, settling back, his arm round his lady’s waist. “It’s an outrage for the police to break their own rules that way. I guess they don’t need to be in a hurry any more than we do!”

  The Justice made short work of it.

  As they stood so briefly before him, there swept across her vision the m
emory of what she had always prophesied as her wedding: — a crowded church, “The Light That Breathed O’er Eden” from an unseen singer; then the warm air trembling to the Lohengrin march; all heads turning; the procession down the aisle; herself appearing — climax of everything — a delicious and brilliant figure: graceful, rosy, shy, an imperial prize for the groom, who in these foreshadowings had always been very indistinct. The picture had always failed in outline there: the bridegroom’s nearest approach to definition had never been clearer than a composite photograph. The truth is, Cora never in her life wished to be married.

  But she was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  VALENTINE CORLISS HAD nothing to do but to wait for the money his friend Antonio would send him by cable. His own cable, anticipating his letter, had been sent yesterday, when he came back to the hotel, after lunching in the country with Cora.

  As he walked down Corliss Street, after his tumultuous interview with her, he was surprised to find himself physically tremulous: he had not supposed that an encounter, however violent, with an angry woman could so upset his nerves. It was no fear of Pryor which shook him. He knew that Pryor did not mean to cause his arrest — certainly not immediately. Of course, Pryor knew that Cora would tell him. The old fellow’s move was a final notification. It meant: “Get out of town within twenty-four hours.” And Corliss intended to obey. He would have left that evening, indeed, without the warning; his trunk was packed.

  He would miss Cora. He had kept a cool head throughout their affair until the last; but this morning she had fascinated him: and he found himself passionately admiring the fury of her. She had confused him as he had never been confused. He thought he had tamed her; thought he owned her; and the discovery of this mistake was what made him regret that she would not come away with him. Such a flight, until to-day, had been one of his apprehensions: but now the thought that it was not to be, brought something like pain. At least, he felt a vacancy; had a sense of something lacking. She would have been a bright comrade for the voyage; and he thought of gestures of hers, turns of the head, tricks of the lovely voice; and sighed.