The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig Part 30

She was silent; her head down, her lips compressed, her fingers fiercely interlaced with the ruins of her handkerchief.

"It is necessary that you marry," said he summing up. "It is wisest and easiest to marry me, since I am willing. To refuse would be to inflict an irreparable injury upon yourself in order to justify a paltry whim for injuring me."

She laughed harshly. "You are frank," said she.

"I am paying you the compliment of frankness. I am appealing to your intelligence, where a less intelligent man and one that knew you less would try to gain his point by chicane, flattery, deception."

"Yes--it is a compliment," she answered. "It was stupid of me to sneer at your frankness."

A long silence. He lighted a cigarette, smoked it with deliberation foreign to his usual self but characteristic of him when he was closely and intensely engaged; for he was like a thoroughbred that is all fret and champ and pawing and caper until the race is on, when he at once settles down into a calm, steady stride, with all the surplus nervous energy applied directly and intelligently to the work in hand. She was not looking at him, but she was feeling him in every atom of her body, was feeling the power, the inevitableness of the man. He angered her, made her feel weak, a helpless thing, at his mercy. True, it was his logic that was convincing her, not his magnetic and masterful will; but somehow the two seemed one. Never had he been so repellent, never had she felt so hostile to him.

"I will marry you," she finally said. "But I must tell you that I do not love you--or even like you. The reverse."

His face, of the large, hewn features, with their somehow pathetic traces of the struggles and sorrows of his rise, grew strange, almost terrible. "Do you mean that?" he said, turning slowly toward her.

She quickly shifted her eyes, in which her dislike was showing, shifted them before he could possibly have seen. And she tried in vain to force past her lips the words which she believed to be the truth, the words his pathetic, powerful face told her would end everything. Yes, she knew he would not marry her if she told him the truth about her feelings.

"Do you mean that?" he repeated, stern and sharp, yet sad, wistfully sad, too.

"I don't know what I mean," she cried, desperately afraid of him, afraid of the visions the idea of not marrying him conjured. "I don't know what I mean," she repeated. "You fill me with a kind of--of--horror. You draw me into your grasp in spite of myself--like a whirlpool--and rouse all my instinct to try and save myself. Sometimes that desire becomes a positive frenzy."

He laughed complacently. "That is love," said he.

She did not resent his tone or dispute his verdict externally. "If it is love," replied she evenly, "then never did love wear so strange, so dreadful a disguise."

He laid his talon-hand, hardened and misshapen by manual labor, but if ugly, then ugly with the majesty of the twisted, tempest-defying oak, over hers. "Believe me, Margaret, you love me. You have loved me all along.... And I you."

"Don't deceive yourself," she felt bound to say, "I certainly do not love you if love has any of its generally accepted meanings."

"I am not the general sort of person," said he. "It is not strange that I should arouse extraordinary feelings, is it? Driver"--he had the trap in the roof up and was thrusting through it a slip of paper--"take us to that street and number."

She gasped with a tightening at the heart. "I must return to the hotel at once," she said hurriedly.

He fixed his gaze upon her. "We are going to the preacher's," said he.

"The preacher's?" she murmured, shrinking in terror.

"Grant is waiting for us there"--he glanced at his watch--"or, rather, will be there in about ten minutes. We are a little earlier than I antic.i.p.ated."

She flushed crimson, paled, felt she would certainly suffocate with rage.

"Before you speak," continued he, "listen to me. You don't want to go back into that torment of doubt in which we've both been hopping about for a month, like a pair of d.a.m.ned souls being used as tennis b.a.l.l.s by fiends. Let's settle the business now, and for good and all. Let us have peace--for G.o.d's sake, peace! I know you've been miserable. I know I've been on the rack. And it's got to stop. Am I not right?"

She leaned back in her corner of the cab, shut her eyes, said no more--and all but ceased to think. What was there to say? What was there to think? When Fate ceases to tolerate our pleasant delusion of free will, when it openly and firmly seizes us and hurries us along, we do not discuss or comment. We close our minds, relax and submit.

At the parsonage he sprang out, stood by to help her descend, half-dragged her from the cab when she hesitated. He shouted at the driver: "How much do I owe you, friend?"

"Six dollars, sir."

"Not on your life!" shouted Craig furiously. He turned to Margaret, standing beside him in a daze. "What do you think of THAT! This fellow imagines because I've got a well-dressed woman along I'll submit. But I'm not that big a sn.o.b." He was looking up at the cabman again. "You miserable thief!" he exclaimed. "I'll give you three dollars, and that's too much by a dollar."

"Don't you call me names!" yelled the cabman, shaking his fist with the whip in it.

"The man's drunk," cried Josh to the little crowd of people that had a.s.sembled. Margaret, overwhelmed with mortification, tugged at his sleeve. "The man's not overcharging much--if any," she said in an undertone.

"You're saying that because you hate scenes," replied Josh loudly. "You go on into the house. I'll take care of this hound."

Margaret retreated within the parsonage gate; her very soul was sick.

She longed for the ground to open and swallow her forever. It would be bad enough for a man to make such an exhibition at any time; but to make it when he was about to be married!--and in such circ.u.mstances!--to squabble and scream over a paltry dollar or so!

"Here's a policeman!" cried Craig. "Now, you thief, we'll see!"

The cabman sprang down from his seat. "You d.a.m.n jay!" he bellowed. "You don't know New York cabfares. Was you ever to town before--eh?"

Craig beckoned the policeman with vast, excited gestures. Margaret fled up the walk toward the parsonage door, but not before she heard Craig say to the policeman:

"I am Joshua Craig, a.s.sistant to the Attorney-General of the United States. This thief here--" And so on until he had told the whole story.

Margaret kept her back to the street, but she could hear the two fiercely-angry voices, the laughter of the crowd. At last Craig joined her--panting, flushed, triumphant. "I knew he was a thief. Four dollars was the right amount, but I gave him five, as the policeman said it was best to quiet him."

He gave a jerk at the k.n.o.b of parsonage street bell as if he were determined to pull it out; the bell within rang loudly, angrily, like the infuriate voice of a sleeper who has been roused with a thundering kick. "This affair of ours," continued Craig, "is going to cost money.

And I've been spending it to-day like a drunken sailor. The more careful I am, the less careful I will have to be, my dear."

The door opened--a maid, scowling, appeared.

"Come on," cried Joshua to Margaret. And he led the way, brushing the maid aside as she stood her ground, att.i.tude belligerent, but expression perplexed. To her, as he pa.s.sed, Craig said: "Tell Doctor Scones that Mr. Craig and the lady are here. Has Mr. Arkwright come?"

By this time he was in the parlor; a glance around and he burst out:

"Late, by jiminy! And I told him to be here ahead of time."

He darted to the window. "Ah! There he comes!" He wheeled upon Margaret just as she dropped, half-fainting, into a chair. "What's the matter, dear?" He leaped to her side. "No false emotions, please. If you could weather the real ones what's the use of getting up ladylike excitement over--"

"For G.o.d's sake!" exclaimed Margaret, "sit down and shut up! If you don't I shall scream--scream--SCREAM!"

The maid gaped first at one, then at the other, left them reluctantly to admit Arkwright. As she opened the door she had to draw back a little.

There was Craig immediately behind her. He swept her aside, flung the door wide. "Come on! Hurry!" he cried to Grant. "We're waiting." And he seized him by the arm and thrust him into the parlor. At the same instant the preacher entered by another door. Craig's excitement, far from diminishing, grew wilder and wilder. The preacher thought him insane or drunk. Grant and Margaret tried in vain to calm him. Nothing would do but the ceremony instantly--and he had his way. Never was there a more undignified wedding. When the responses were all said and the marriage was a fact accomplished, so far as preacher could accomplish it, Craig seemed suddenly to subside.

"I should like to go into the next room for a moment," said the pallid and trembling Margaret.

"Certainly," said Doctor Scones sympathetically, and, with a fierce scowl at the groom, he accompanied the bride from the room.

"What a mess you have made!" exclaimed Arkwright indignantly. "You've been acting like a lunatic."

"It wasn't acting--altogether," laughed Josh, giving Grant one of those tremendous slaps on the back. "You see, it was wise to give her something else to think about so she couldn't possibly hesitate or bolt.

So I just gave way to my natural feelings. It's a way I have in difficult situations."

Grant's expression as he looked at him was a mingling of admiration, fear and scorn. "You are full of those petty tricks," said he.