One Wonderful Night Part 11

"What was the young lady really like--how was she dressed?" she cried.

Hardly a word was said within the taxi until the corner was turned out of 56th Street into Seventh Avenue. Curtis, who was sitting with his back to the driver, rose, apologized for the disturbance, and looked through the tiny rear window.

"That's all right," he said. "That car won't be able to move for several minutes; but we must leave nothing to chance," so he sank back into a seat, and permitted the driver to take them whither he listed.

Hermione's first words were not exactly those of a fair maid in utmost distress.

"Oh, how splendid it must be to feel sure that you are able to hit a wretch like Count Va.s.silan and knock him flat!" she cried.

Curtis was surprised. He could not see her kindling eyes, her parted lips, the color which was suffusing forehead and cheeks, and he rather expected to hear subdued sobbing.

"I should hate to have you dislike me as thoroughly as you dislike that fellow," he said.

"I never could. It cannot be in your nature to treat women as he treats them. I do hope you have hurt him."

"I am certain of that, at any rate," laughed Curtis. "He impressed me as weighing a hundred and ninety pounds or thereabouts, and, if it will afford you the slightest gratification, I'll take the first opportunity to work out the approximate force required to drive back a moving body of that weight while traveling forward, say, fifteen miles an hour.

There are angles of resistance to be calculated, too, so it offers a decent problem. Meanwhile, the vital question is--where are we going?"

Hermione was easily chaffed out of her bellicose mood. He could picture the droop in the corners of her mouth as she said forlornly:

"I do not know."

"It is evident," he went on, "that they procured the minister's address from the elevator man at your dwelling."

"Ah, that Rafferty! Wait till I see him," broke in Marcelle.

"Please do not scarify Rafferty, if that is his name. I am much more to be blamed than he, because I a.s.sured your mistress that the Earl and Count Va.s.silan were safe on board the _Switzerland_ till the morning.

I see now that they telegraphed for a tug, and it is best to a.s.sume that they have been kept informed by wireless of nearly every move in the game. . . . You agree with me, I suppose, Lady Hermione, that your return to 1000 59th Street is out of the question?"

"It is, if this mock marriage is to serve any real purpose," she said.

"But pray remember that it is not a mock marriage. You and I are as firmly bound together by the law as if--well, as if we meant it."

She leaned forward a little; her face was etched in Rembrandt lights by the glare from some shop windows.

"Mr. Curtis," she said earnestly, "it is neither just nor reasonable that you should plunge yourself into difficulties for the sake of a girl whom you met to-night for the first time. Why not go out of my life now--this instant? . . . Marcelle and I can find refuge somewhere. The hour is early. . . . Why should you take all the risk?"

He was ready for some such appeal on her part.

"I was taught in school if I did a thing at all to do it thoroughly,"

he said, "and my experience of life has given the adage a halo. It would be worse than useless to desert you now, Lady Hermione. Whatever penalties I may have incurred in the eyes of the law are committed beyond hope of redemption. If I am sought for, the police know exactly where to lay hands on me, and my crime would become monstrous if it were proved that I ran away from my wife on the night of our marriage.

No; we must face the music boldly, and together. We must go to some well-known hotel, register openly, secure rooms, and conduct ourselves on the orthodox lines of all runaway couples, who are presumably head over heels in love with each other. Moreover, in the morning, or whenever we are run to earth, you should allow me to face your father and play the part of the indignant husband. It is essential that your marriage should appear real, or you go back to bondage and I to prison."

"To prison!" The girl's horrified accents showed that she had hardly given a thought to the bald consequences of her escapade.

"Yes. I am not trying to frighten you; but what sort of mercy would a judge show to the craven who absconded before the battle began? If, on the other hand, I am, so to speak, torn from your arms--if a plausible lawyer can depict you tearful and inconsolable--if----"

"You make out a fairly strong case, Mr. Curtis. I have told you that I trust you, and I can only repeat my words of grat.i.tude. . . .

Marcelle, you will not leave me?"

"Never, miss, ma'am--that is, your ladyship."

Thus it befell that Curtis was ready with the name of a prominent hotel in Fifth Avenue when the driver halted in Madison Avenue. He made his choice almost at random, but selected one of the newest uptown caravanserais, merely because it lay a considerable distance from 27th Street. Otherwise, his object in picking a large hotel being to avoid notice among a fashionable throng, he might easily have taken his "wife" to the Waldorf-Astoria, in which event certain complications even then hot in the making would not have followed their intricate course, while Hermione's future must have been affected most powerfully.

"I suppose you are prepared to submit to certain conditions which govern this new venture?" said Curtis, when the cab was once more speeding onward to a definite goal.

"What are they?"

It would be scarcely fair to describe Hermione's tone as suspicious, for she was a loyal soul, and was wondering in her heart of hearts what manner of man this knight errant could be; but his very self-possession fluttered her; she had been so accustomed to think and act in her own defense that she experienced a subtle fear of this calm, cool-headed, masterful person whom she must learn to regard as her husband.

"Well,"--Curtis's speech was so unemotional that he might have been describing one of his Manchurian railway schemes--"we must treat each other with a certain familiarity--even use little endearments--in public--and address each other by pet names--mine is Chow."

Despite her troubles, the girl laughed, and Curtis recalled the tinkle of silver bells in a temple at evening on the banks of the far-away Wei-ho.

"But that is the name of a dog!" she t.i.ttered.

"Yes. In my case, it denoted some unpleasant personal characteristics when a stupid mandarin put obstacles in my way. I never gave any warning, but rushed in and bit him, not actually, of course, but in his illicit commissions, which annoyed him more than a real bite."

"I don't like Chow," she said. "Your name is John. Won't Jack do?"

"Fine." It was lucky she could not see the smile that flitted across his face. "And yours?"

"Mamma always used my full name, and I have never had anyone else to give me a pet name, unless it was 'Tatters' at school."

"We might bracket Tatters with Chow, and dismiss both," he said lightly. "And I like the sound of Hermione so well that it is pat on my lips already. . . . Now, you, Marcelle--remember that her ladyship has become Lady Hermione Curtis."

"Oh, not Mrs. Curtis?"

"No. An earl's daughter retains her courtesy t.i.tle after marriage."

"All right, sir. I shan't forget." Indeed, Marcelle was jubilant.

She had been "dying" to use her mistress's t.i.tle, once she became aware of it, but it was taboo at 59th Street.

Curtis had covered a good deal of ground during that brief discussion in the cab, but Hermione was not quite prepared for its logical sequel in the hotel.

Naturally, they attracted no unusual attention when they entered the hotel. Other people merely noticed the pa.s.sing of a distinguished looking young man in evening dress--for Curtis had promptly whipped off that ominous overcoat--and a slender, veiled lady, of elegant carriage, who walked up to the bureau, followed by a smartly dressed girl who gazed about her with bright, all-seeing eyes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Scenes from the photo-drama.]

"My wife and I have been detained in New York this evening unexpectedly," explained Curtis to the hotel clerk. "We want a suite of rooms, a sitting-room, three bedrooms with baths--you would like Marcelle's room to communicate with yours, wouldn't you, dear?" and he turned suddenly to Hermione.

"Y-yes," she faltered, for the attack took her unaware.

"What floor, sir? We have a nice suite on the tenth."

"Not so high, please," said Hermione. Then she sprung a mine on her own account. "I know it is stupid, Jack, darling, but I am so afraid of fire."