No. 13 Washington Square Part 15

He drew back amazed.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

Mrs. De Peyster searched frantically for the keyhole to the inner door.

"Matilda, I'm not the man to take that!" he declared irefully. "What do you mean?"

"Go! Go!" she gasped.

He drew back wrathfully, but with an awful dignity.

"Very well, Miss Simpson. But I'm not a man that forgives. You'll be sorry for this!"

As he started stiffly away Mrs. De Peyster found the keyhole. She turned her key, opened the door, and closed it quickly behind her.

Gasping, shivering, she groped in the dusky hall until she found a chair. Into this she sank, half fainting, and sat shaking with astoundment, with horror, with wrath.

Wrath swiftly became the ruling emotion. It began to fulminate. She would discharge William! She would send him flying the very next morning, bag and baggage!

Then an appalling thought shot through her. She could not discharge William!

She could not discharge William, because she was not there to discharge him! She was upon the Atlantic highroad, speeding for Europe, and would not be home for many a month! And during all those months, whenever she dared appear, she would be subject to William's loverly attention!

She sat rigid with the horror of this new development. But she had not yet had time to realize its full possibilities--for hardly a minute had pa.s.sed since she had entered--when she heard a key slide into the lock of the front door and saw a vague figure enter the unlighted hall. She arose in added terror. Had that William come back to--

"Oh, there you are, Matilda," softly called a voice, and the vague figure came toward her.

Mrs. De Peyster's terror took suddenly a new turn. For the voice was not the voice of her coachman.

"J-a-c-k!" she breathed wildly.

Jack threw an arm about Mrs. De Peyster's shoulders.

"Ho, ho, that's the time I caught you, Matilda," said he, in teasing reproof. "U'm, I saw those tender little love pa.s.sages between you and William!"

Mrs. De Peyster stood a pillar of ice.

"Better not let mother find it out," he advised. "If she got on to this! But I'll never tell on you, Matilda." He patted her shoulder a.s.suringly. "So don't worry."

Mrs. De Peyster's lips opened. If her voice sounded unlike Matilda's voice, the difference was unconsciously attributed by Jack to agitation due to his discovery.

"How--how do you come here?" she asked.

"With an almighty lot of trouble!" grumbled he. "Came around the corner an hour ago just in time to see you drive off with William.

I've got a key to the inside door, but none to the door in the boarding; and as I knew there was n.o.body in the house I could rouse up, there was nothing for it but to wait till you and William came back. So we've been sitting out there on a park bench ever since."

There was one particular word of Jack's explanation that drummed against Mrs. De Peyster's ear.

"We?" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "We?" Then she noticed that another shadowy figure had drawn nearer in the dark. "Who--who's that?"

"Mary," was Jack's prompt and joyous answer.

"Mary! Not that--that Mary Morgan?"

"She used to be. She's Mary de Peyster now."

"You're not--not married?"

"To-day," he cried in exultation. "We slipped out to Stamford; everything was done secretly there, and it's to be kept strictly on the quiet for a time." He bent down close to Mrs. De Peyster's ear.

"Don't let Mary know how mother objected to her; I haven't told her, and she doesn't guess it. And oh, Matilda," he bubbled out enthusiastically, "she's the kind of a little sport that will stick by a chap through anything, and she's clever and full of fun, and a regular little dear!"

He turned. "Come here, Mary," he called softly. "This is Matilda."

The next instant a slight figure threw its arms about Mrs. De Peyster and kissed her warmly.

"I'm so glad to meet you at last, Matilda!" exclaimed a low, clear voice. "Jack has told me how good you have been to him ever since he was a baby. I know we shall be the very, very best of friends!"

"And so--you're--you're married!" mumbled Mrs. De Peyster.

Jack was too excited by his happiness to have noticed Mrs. De Peyster's voice had it been a dozen-fold more unlike Matilda's than it was. "Yes!" he cried. "And wouldn't it surprise mother if she knew!

Mother, sailing so unsuspiciously along on the Plutonia!" He gave a chortle of delight. "But oh, I say, Matilda," he cried suddenly, "you mustn't write her!"

Mrs. De Peyster did not answer.

"We don't want her to know yet," Jack insisted; "that's one reason we've done the whole thing so quietly." Then he added jocosely: "If you tell, there's a thing I might tell her about you.

About--u'm--about you and William. Want me to do that--eh? Better promise not to tell."

"I won't," whispered Mrs. De Peyster.

"It's a bargain, then. But there's something else that would surprise her, too. I'm going to work."

"But not at once," put in Mary de Peyster, _nee_ Mary Morgan, in her soft contralto voice, that seemed to effervesce with mischief. "Tell Matilda what you're doing to do."

"I've already told you, Matilda, about my little experiment in the pick-and-shovel line. I decided that I didn't care for that profession. I've saved a few hundred out of my allowance. Monday I'm going to enter the School of Mines at Columbia--am going to study straight through the summer--night and day till the money gives out.

By that time I ought to be able to get a job that will support us. And then I'll study hard of nights till I become a real mining engineer!"

"But we've got to live close! Oh, but we've got to live close!"

exclaimed Mary joyously, as though living close were one of the chiefest pleasures of life.

"Yes, we've certainly got to live close!" emphasized Jack. "That's why we're here."

"Why you're here?" repeated Mrs. De Peyster in a low, dazed tone.

"Yes." Jack gave a gleeful, excited laugh. "I had an inspiration how to economize. Says I to Mary, 'Mary, since mother is away, and this big house is empty except for you, Matilda, why pay rent?' So here we are, and here we're going to live all summer--on the '_q t_,' of course." He slipped an arm about Mary and one about Mrs. De Peyster, and again laughed his gleeful, excited laugh. "Just you, and Mary, and me--and, oh, say, Matilda, won't it be a lark!"

CHAPTER VIII