Part 10 (2/2)

”He saved your life,” said the judge. ”The wood and iron part would have hit your head.”

”His breath is knocked out of him,” said Miss Bording.

”He saved my life. I cannot understand his strange devotion. I cannot understand it,” said William Leadbury, the while opening the page's vest, tearing away his collar, and straining at his s.h.i.+rt, that the stunned lungs might have play and get to work again. The stiffly starched s.h.i.+rt resisted his efforts and he reached in under it to detach the fastenings of the studs that held the bosom together. Back came his hand as if it had encountered a serpent beneath that s.h.i.+rt front.

”I begin to understand,” he exclaimed, and bending an enigmatical look upon the startled judge and his daughter, he picked the page up in his arms with the utmost tenderness, and bore him away.

The pains in Clarissa's body had left her. Indeed, they had all but gone when on Sunday morning, after a night which had been one of formless dreams where she had not known whether she slept or waked or where she was, a frowsy maid had called her from the bed where she lay beneath a blanket, fully dressed, and told her it was time she was getting back to the city. Not a sign of William Leadbury as she pa.s.sed out of the great silent house. Not a word from him, no inquiry for the welfare of the little page who had come so nigh dying for him.

Clarissa was too proud to do or say anything to let the frowsy maid guess that she wondered at this or cared aught for the ungrateful captain. She steeled her heart against him, but though as the days went by she succeeded in ceasing to care for one who was so unworthy of her regard, she could not stifle the poignant regret that he was thus unworthy.

It had come Friday evening, almost closing time in the great store.

Slowly and heavily, Clarissa was setting her counter in order, preparing to go to her lodgings and nurse her sick heart until slumber should give respite from her pain, when there came a messenger from the dress-making department asking her presence there.

”We've just got an order for a ready-made ball-dress for a lady that is unexpectedly going to the Charity Ball to-night,” said Mrs.

McGuffin, head of the department. ”The message says the lady is just your height and build and color--she noticed you sometime, it seems--and that we are to fit one of the dresses to you, making such alterations as would make it fit you, choosing one suitable to your complexion. When it's done, to save time, you are to go right to the person who ordered it, without stopping to change your clothes. You can do that there. It will make her late to the ball, at best. A carriage and a person to conduct you will be waiting.”

It was a magnificent dress that was gradually built upon the figure of Clarissa, and when at last it was completed and she stood before the great pier gla.s.s flushed with the radiance of a pleasure she could not but feel despite her late sorrow and the fact she was but the lay figure for a more fortunate woman, one would have to search far to find a more beautiful creature.

”Whyee!” exclaimed Mrs. McGuffin. ”Why, I had no idea you had such a figure. Why, I must have you in my department to show off dresses on.

You will work at the cutlery counter not a day after to-morrow. But there, I am keeping you. The ball must almost have begun. Here's a bag with your things in it. I was going to say, 'your other things.'” And throwing a splendid cloak about the lovely shoulders of Miss Clarissa, Mrs. McGuffin turned her over to the messenger.

There was already somebody in the carriage into which Clarissa stepped, but as the curtain was drawn across the opposite window, she was unable to even conjecture the s.e.x of the individual who was to be her conductor to her destination, and steeped in dreams which from pleasant ones quickly pa.s.sed to bitter, she speedily forgot all about the person at her side. But presently she perceived their carriage had come into the midst of a squadron of other carriages charging down upon a brilliantly lighted entrance where men and women, brave in evening dress, were moving in.

”Why, we are going to the ball-room itself,” and as she said this and realized that here on the very threshold of the entrancing gayeties she was to put off her fine plumage and see the other woman pa.s.s out of the dressing-room into the delights beyond, while she crept away in her own simple garb amid the questioning, amused, and contemptuous stares of the haughty dames who had witnessed the exchange, she broke into a piteous sob.

”Why, of course to the ball-room, my darling,” breathed a voice, which low though it was, thrilled her more than the voice of an archangel, and she felt herself strained to a man's heart and her bare shoulders, which peeped from the cloak at the thrust of a pair of strong arms beneath it, came in contact with the cool, smooth surface of the bosom of a dress s.h.i.+rt. ”Don't you remember that I engaged the second two-step at the Charity Ball?”

Clarissa, almost swooning with joy as she reclined palpitating upon the manly breast of Captain William Leadbury, said never a word, for the power of speech was not in her; the power of song, of uttering peans of joy, perhaps, but not the power of speech.

”Have I a.s.sumed too much,” said Leadbury, gravely, relaxing somewhat the tightness of his embrace. ”Have I, arguing from the fact that you both served me in the crisis of my career and saved my life, a.s.sumed too much in believing you love me? If so, I beg your pardon for arranging this surprise. I will release you. I----”

”Oh, no,” crooned Clarissa, nestling against him with all the quivering protest of a child about to be taken from its mother. ”You read my actions rightly. Oh, how I have suffered this week. No word from you. I could not understand it. Of course you could not know I was a girl. But I thought you ought to be grateful, even to a boy.”

”But I did know you were a girl. When you fell, I began to open the clothes about your chest. When I discovered your s.e.x, I carried you upstairs, placed you on a bed, threw a blanket over you and was about to call Miss Bording to take charge of you----”

”I'm glad you didn't. I don't like Miss Bording,” said Clarissa.

”I had left to call her, when that poltroon of an Anderson Walkley, who had stolen back into the house after running from it, crept behind me and struck me back of the ear with a shaving mug. I dropped unconscious. In the resulting confusion, your very existence was as forgotten as your whereabouts was unknown. You lay there as I had left you until a maid found you in the morning and packed you off. It was not until Wednesday that I was able to be out. I knew you came from this store, and mousing about in there, I had no trouble in identifying the nice young page with the beautiful young woman at the cutlery counter. I could scarce wait two days, but as three had already pa.s.sed, I planned this surprise, remembering our banter when I talked with you, disguised as a man of fifty, and now you are to go in with me as my affianced bride. We'd better hurry, for the driver must be wondering what we are thinking about.”

It was worthy of remark that even the ladies pa.s.sed many compliments upon the beauty and grace of Miss Clarissa Dawson, the young woman who came to the ball with William Leadbury, former captain in the army of the Republique Francaise, heir to the millions of the late James Leadbury, and a number of persons esteemed judges of all that pertains to the Terpsich.o.r.ean art, declared that when she appeared upon the floor for the first time, which was to dance the second two-step with the gallant soldier, that such was the surpa.s.sing grace with which she revolved over the floor that one might well say she seemed to be dancing upon air.

_What Befell Mr. Middleton Because of the Sixth Gift of the Emir._

<script>