Part 14 (1/2)

”I don't want to see you throw yourself away,” she returned. ”A pretty kind of a friend I should be if I encouraged you to marry your Virgie Chubb and your Widow Poole!”

”That's it, precisely,” he a.s.serted; ”that's why I've come to you. Of course, I don't want to throw myself away. Your advice has been invaluable to me--simply invaluable. But so far you have only shown me how it is that none of these girls will suit. That brings me no nearer my object. I've simply got to have a wife.”

”I don't see why you need be in such a hurry,” she replied.

”I must, I must!” he retorted. ”And there's one more girl I haven't mentioned so far--”

”You've kept her to the last!” she snapped.

”Yes, I've kept her to the last, because I haven't any right even to hope that she would have me. She is not a widow, and she hasn't a cast in her eye, and she is neither fat nor scrawny; she is just a lovely young girl--”

”You speak of her with more enthusiasm than you did of any of the others,” she broke in. ”Do I know her?”

”You ought to know her,” he answered; ”but I doubt if you think as well of her as I do.”

”Who is she?” was her swift question.

”You won't be offended?” he asked.

”Of course not! How absurd! Why should I be offended?” she responded.

”Who is she? Who is she?”

The Doctor answered seriously, and with a quaver of emotion in his voice, ”She is the girl I have loved for a long time, and her name is Minnie Contoit!”

The girl did not say anything. Her face was as pale as ever, but there was a light in the depths of her cool gray eyes.

”Listen to me once more, Minnie!” implored the young fellow by her side.

”You say that none of these other girls will suit me, and I knew that before you said it. I knew that you are the only girl I ever wanted. You promised me your friends.h.i.+p the last time we talked this over, and now I've had a chance to tell you how much I need a wife I have hoped you would look at the matter in a clearer light.”

She said nothing. He gave a hasty glance backward and he saw that her father and her grandfather were only a hundred yards or so behind them.

The reddening sunset on their right cast lengthening shadows across the road. The spring day was drawing to an end, and the hour had come when he was to learn his fate forever.

”Minnie,” he urged once more, ”don't you think it is your duty--as a friend, you know--to give me the wife I ought to have?”

She looked at him, and laughed nervously, and then dropped her eyes.

”Oh, _well_,” she said at last, ”if I must!”

(1900)

[Ill.u.s.tration: In a Hansom]

There were two men in the cab as it turned into Fifth Avenue and began to skirt the Park on its way down-town. One of them was perhaps fifty; he had grizzled hair, cold, gray eyes, and a square jaw. The other appeared to be scant thirty; he had soft brown eyes, and a soft brown mustache drooped over his rather irresolute mouth. The younger man was the better-looking of the two, and the better dressed; and he seemed also to be more at home in New York, while the elder was probably a stranger in the city--very likely a Westerner, if the black slouch hat was a true witness.

They sat side by side in silence, having nothing to say, the one to the other. The shadows that were slowly stretching themselves across the broad walk on the Park side of the Avenue s.h.i.+vered as the spring breeze played with the tender foliage of the trees that spread their ample branches almost over the wall. The languid scent of blossoming bushes was borne fitfully beyond the border of the Park. To the eyes of the younger of the two men in the hansom the quivering play of light and shade brought no pleasure; and he had no delight in the fragrance of the springtime--although in former years he had been wont to thrill with unspoken joy at the promise of summer.

The elder of the two took no thought of such things; it was as though he had no time to waste. Of course, he was aware that winter followed the fall, and that summer had come in its turn; but this was all in the day's work. He had the reputation of being a good man in his business; and although the spring had brought no smile to his firm lips, he was satisfied with his success in the latest task intrusted to him. He had in his pocket a folded paper, signed by the Governor of a State in the Mississippi Valley, and sealed with the seal of that commonwealth; and in the little bag on his knees he carried a pair of handcuffs.

As the hansom approached the Plaza at the entrance to the Park, the gray-eyed Westerner caught sight of the thickening crowd, and of the apparent confusion in which men and women and children were mixed, bicycles and electric cabs, carriages and cross-town cars, all weltering together; and he wondered for a moment whether he had done wisely in allowing so much apparent freedom to his prisoner. He looked right and left swiftly, as though sizing up the chances of escape, and then he glanced down at the bag on his knees.