No. 13 Washington Square Part 19

Jack and Mary cooed; Matilda sat all of a heap; and presently William walked in. To her other emotions, Mrs. De Peyster had added a new shock. For William the peerless--fit coachman for an emperor--William, whom till that night she could not have imagined, had she imagined about such things at all, other than as sleeping in a high collar and with all his bra.s.s b.u.t.tons snugly b.u.t.toned--William was coatless, and collarless, and slouching from his mouth was an old pipe!

He came in with a haughty glower, for he had supposed the ring to be Matilda's. But at sight of Jack and Mary his face went blank with amazement.

"Why, why, Mr. Jack!" Hastily he jerked his pipe into his pocket and began b.u.t.toning the open collar of his shirt. "I--I beg pardon, sir."

"h.e.l.lo, William! This is Mrs. Jack, William. Just married. We've come to spend the summer with you."

"Yes, sir."

"But on the quiet, William. Understand? If you leak a word about our being here--well, I know about the heart-throb business between you and Matilda. If you drop one word--one single word, I put mother next to what's doing between you two."

"Yes, sir."

"Just wanted you to know we were here, William, so you wouldn't by any chance throw a surprise that would give us away. That's all. Keep mum about us"--with a sly wink at him and another at Matilda--"and you two can goo-goo at each other like a popular song. Good-night."

Jack turned his back; and Mary, whose heart went out to all lovers, delicately turned hers.

"William," fluttered Matilda, taking an eager, hesitating step toward him.

He stared at her haughtily--as haughtily as is in the power of a mere mortal who has no collar on.

"William," she cried bewildered, "what is it?"

"I believe you know what it is, Miss Simpson," he replied witheringly, and stalked out under full majesty.

She stood dumbfounded; but only for a moment.

"Matilda," spoke up Jack, "have you got supper things started yet in the kitchen?"

"Er--er--what?" stammered poor Matilda.

"Say, see here--what the d.i.c.kens _is_ the matter with you?" Jack exploded in exasperation. "You just promised to start supper in the kitchen, and now--"

"Of course--of course," gulped Matilda, "I forgot. I'll do it right away."

Matilda was reeling. But she perceived that here was her chance to get out of the room--and for the moment that was her supreme and only desire. She started for the door of the butler's pantry.

"We'll be down with you in about five minutes," Jack called after her.

In the darkness of the pantry a hand fell upon her arm. "Matilda,"

breathed her mistress's voice, and Matilda had enough control not to cry out, or was too far gone. Clutching hands, they went down the winding stairs that led from the butler's pantry to the kitchen.

"Oh, ma'am, ma'am!" moaned Matilda in the darkness.

"Matilda"--in awed breathlessness--"isn't this terrible?"

"Oh, ma'am! ma'am!"

"If Jack should learn that I am here--" She could not express the horror of it.

"Oh, ma'am!"

Mrs. De Peyster's voice rang out with wild desperation.

"Matilda, there is only one thing to do! We must leave the house!"

"I think we'd better, ma'am," Matilda snuffled hysterically, "for with all of you here, and this keeping up, I--I don't think I'd last a day, ma'am."

"And we must leave at once! We've not a second to spare. They said they were coming right down. We must be out of the house before they come!"

"Oh, ma'am, yes! This minute! But where--"

"There's no time to think of anything now but getting out," cried Mrs.

De Peyster with frantic energy. "Slip up the front stairway, Matilda, and get your hat. And here are my keys. Lock my sitting-room, so they can't see any one's been living in it. You can manage it without them seeing you. And for heaven's sake, hurry!"

Two minutes later these things were done, and Matilda, bonneted, was hurrying forward hand in hand with Mrs. De Peyster through the black hallway of the bas.e.m.e.nt. Behind them, descending the stairs from the butler's pantry, sounded the chatter and laughter of the larking honeymooners; and then from the kitchen came the surprised and exasperated call: "h.e.l.lo, Matilda--See here, where the d.i.c.kens are you?"

But at just that moment the twin, unbreathing figures in black slipped through the servants' door and noiselessly closed it behind them.

CHAPTER IX

THE FLIGHT

The two dark figures stood an instant, breathless, in the dark mouth of the cavern beneath the marble bal.u.s.traded stairway that ascended with chaste dignity to Mrs. De Peyster's n.o.ble front door. Swiftly they surveyed the scene. Not a policeman was in sight: no one save, across the way on Washington Square benches, a few plebeian lovers enjoying the soft calm of a May eleven o'clock.

The pair, with veils down, each looking a plagiarism of the other, slipped out of the servants' entrance, through the gate of the low iron fence, and arm clutching arm hastened eastward to University Place. Thus far no one had challenged them. Here they turned and went rapidly northward: past the Lafayette, where Mrs. De Peyster's impulse to take a taxicab was instantly countermanded by the fear that so near her home there was danger of recognition: and onward, onward they went, swiftly, wordlessly, their one commanding impulse to get away--to get away.

At Fourteenth Street they pa.s.sed a policeman. Again they choked back their breath; shiveringly they felt his eyes upon them. And, indeed, his eyes were--interestedly; for to that Hibernian, with his native whimsicality, they suggested the somewhat unusual phenomenon of the same person out walking with herself. But he did not speak.

At the head of Union Square they caught a roving taxicab. Their next thought, after bare escape, was necessarily concerned with shelter, a hiding-place. To the chauffeur's "Where to, ladies?" Mrs. De Peyster said, "Hotel Dauphin." The instinct, the Mrs. De Peyster of habit, which was beneath her surface of agitation, said the Dauphin because the Dauphin was quite the most select hotel in New York. In fact, six months before, when Mrs. De Peyster desired to introduce and honor the Duke de Crecy in a larger way than her residence permitted, it was at the Dauphin that she had elected to give the ball that had brought her so much deferential praise--which occasion was the first and only time she had departed from her strict old-family practice of limiting her social functions to such as could be accommodated within her own house. She had then been distinctly pleased; one could hardly have expected good breeding upon so large a scale. And her present subconscious impression of the Dauphin was that it was ducal, if not regal, in its reserved splendor, in its manner of subdued, punctilious ceremony.

She could remain at the Dauphin, in seclusion, until she had time to think. Then she could act.

As she sped smoothly up Fifth Avenue--her second ride on the Avenue that night--she began, in the cushioned privacy of the taxi, to recover somewhat from the panic of dire necessity that had driven them forth. Other matters began to flash spasmodically across the screen of her mind. One of these was William. And there the film stopped. The cold, withering look William had given Matilda a few minutes before remained fixed upon the screen. That look threatened her most unpleasantly as to the future. What if William should learn who was the real Matilda to whom he had made love!

"Matilda," she began, calling up her dignity, "I desire to instruct you upon a certain matter."

"Yes, ma'am," whispered Matilda.

"I expressly instruct you not to mention or hint to any one, particularly William, that it was I and not you who went out driving with him to-night."

"I'll not, ma'am."

"You swear?"