Part 36 (1/2)
”D'ye promus you will?”
”Certainly,” said Starr with dignity.
”Will ye do it right off straight?”
”Yes, if you will go at once.”
”Cross yer heart?”
”What?”
”Cross yer heart ye will? Thet's a sort o' oath t' make yer keep yer promus,” explained Lizzie.
”A lady needs no such thing to make her keep her promise. Don't you know that ladies always keep their promises?”
”I wasn't so sure!” said Lizzie, ”You can't most allus tell, 't's bes' to be on the safe side. Will yer promus me yer won't marry him ef ye find out he's my husband?”
”Most certainly I will not marry him if he is already married. Now go, please, at once. I haven't a minute to spare. If you don't go at once I cannot have time to call him up.”
”You sure I kin trust you?”
Starr turned on the girl such a gaze of mingled dignity and indignation that her eye quailed before it.
”Well, I s'pose I gotta,” she said, dropping her eyes before Starr's righteous wrath. ”But 'no weddin' bells' fer you to-night ef yeh keep yer promus. So long!”
Starr shuddered as the girl pa.s.sed her. The whiff of unwashed garments, stale cooking, and undefinable tenement odor that reached her nostrils sickened her. Was it possible that she must let this creature have a hold even momentarily upon her last few hours? Yet she knew she must. She knew she would not rest until she had been rea.s.sured by Carter's voice and the explanation that he would surely give her. She rushed upstairs to her own private 'phone, locking the door on even her old nurse, and called up the 'phone in Carter's private apartments.
Without owning it to herself she had been a little troubled all the afternoon because she had not heard from Carter. Her flowers had come,--magnificent in their costliness and arrangement, and everything he was to attend to was done, she knew, but no word had come from himself. It was unlike him.
She knew that he had given a dinner the evening before to his old friends who were to be his ushers, and that the festivities would have lasted late.
He had not probably arisen very early, of course, but it was drawing on toward the hour of the wedding now. She intended to begin to dress at once after she had 'phoned him. It was strange she had not heard from him.
After much delay an unknown voice answered the 'phone, and told her Mr.
Carter could not come now. She asked who it was but got no response, except that Mr. Carter couldn't come now. The voice had a m.u.f.fled, thick sound.
”Tell him to call me then as soon as possible,” she said, and the voice answered, ”Awright!”
Reluctantly she hung up the receiver and called Morton to help her dress.
She would have liked to get the matter out of the way before she went about the pretty ceremony, and submitted herself to her nurse's hands with an ill grace and troubled thoughts. The coa.r.s.e beauty of Lizzie's face haunted her. It reminded her of an actress that Carter had once openly admired, and she had secretly disliked. She found herself shuddering inwardly every time she recalled Lizzie's harsh voice, and uncouth sentences.
She paid little heed to the dressing process after all and let Morton have her way in everything, starting nervously when the 'phone bell rang, or anyone tapped at her door.
A message came from her father finally. He hoped to be with her in less than an hour now, and as yet no word had come from Carter! Why did he not know she would be anxious? What could have kept him from his usual greeting of her, and on their wedding day!
Suddenly, in the midst of Morton's careful draping of the wedding veil which she was trying in various ways to see just how it should be put on at the last minute, Starr started up from her chair.
”I cannot stand this, Mortie. That will do for now. I must telephone Mr.
Carter. I can't understand why he doesn't call me.”