you.”
He paused for a second and continued earnestly: “You were the first girl in my life whom I ever thought of marrying. You intoxicated me, Myra. It was just as though you were making me love you by some invisible force.”
“I was,” murmured Myra.
“Well, that first intoxication lasted a week, and then one day a letter came from mother saying she was bringing home some wonderful English girl, Lady Helena Something-or-Other. And the same day a man told me that he’d heard I’d been caught by the most famous husband hunter in New York. Well, between these two things I went half-crazy. I came into town to see you and call it off—got as far as the Biltmore entrance and didn’t dare. I started wandering down Fifth Avenue like a wild man, and then I met Kelly. I told him the whole story—and within an hour we’d hatched up this ghastly plan. It was his plan—all the details. His histrionic instinct got the better of him and he had me thinking it was the kindest way out.”
“Finish,” commanded Myra crisply.
“Well, it went splendidly, we thought. Everything—the station meeting, the dinner scene, the scream in the night, the vaudeville—though I thought that was a little too much until—until—— Oh, Myra, when you fainted under that picture and I held you there in my arms, helpless as a baby, I knew I loved you. I was sorry then, Myra.”
There was a long pause while she sat motionless, her hands still clasping her knees—then he burst out with a wild plea of passionate sincerity.
“Myra!” he cried. “If by any possible chance you can bring yourself to forgive and forget I’ll marry you when you say, let my family go to the devil, and love you all my life.”
For a long while she considered, and Knowleton rose and began pacing nervously up and down the aisle of bare bushes, his hands in his pockets, his tired eyes pathetic now, and full of dull appeal. And then she came to a decision.
“You’re perfectly sure?” she asked calmly.
“Yes.”
“Very well, I’ll marry you today.”
With her words the atmosphere cleared and his troubles seemed to fall from him like a ragged cloak. An Indian summer sun drifted out from behind the grey clouds and the dry bushes rustled gently in the breeze.
“It was a bad mistake,” she continued, “but if you’re sure you love me now, that’s the main thing. We’ll go to town this morning, get a license, and I’ll call up my cousin, who’s a minister in the First Presbyterian Church. We can go West tonight.”
“Myra!” he cried jubilantly. “You’re a marvel and I’m not fit to tie your shoe strings. I’m going to make up to you for this, darling girl.”
And taking her supple body in his arms he covered her face with kisses.
The next two hours passed in a whirl. Myra went to the telephone and called her cousin, and then rushed upstairs to pack. When she came down a shining roadster was waiting miraculously in the drive and by ten o’clock they were bowling happily toward the city.
They stopped for a few minutes at the City Hall and again at the jeweler’s, and then they were in the house of the Reverend Walter Gregory on 69th Street, where a sanctimonious gentleman with twinkling eyes and a slight stutter received them cordially and urged them to a breakfast of bacon and eggs before the ceremony.
On the way to the station they stopped only long enough to wire Knowleton’s father, and then they were sitting in their compartment on the Broadway Limited.
“Darn!” exclaimed Myra. “I forgot my bag. Left it at Cousin Walter’s in the excitement.”
“Never mind. We can get a whole new outfit in Chicago.”
She glanced at her wrist watch.
“I’ve got time to telephone him to send it on.”
She rose.
“Don’t be long, dear.”
She leaned down and kissed his forehead.
“You know I couldn’t. Two minutes, honey.”
Outside Myra ran swiftly along the platform and up the steel stairs to the great waiting room, where a man met her—a twinkly-eyed man with a slight stutter.
“How d-did it go, M-myra?”
“Fine! Oh, Walter, you were splendid! I almost wish you’d join the ministry so you could officiate when I do get married.”
“Well—I r-rehearsed for half an hour after I g-got your telephone call.”
“Wish we’d had more time. I’d have had him lease an apartment and buy furniture.”
“H’m,” chuckled Walter. “Wonder how far he’ll go on his honeymoon.”
“Oh, he’ll think I’m on the train till he gets to Elizabeth.” She shook her little fist at the great contour of the marble dome. “Oh, he’s getting off too easy—far too easy!”
“I haven’t f-figured out what the f-fellow did to you, M-myra.”
“You never will, I hope.”
They had reached the side drive and he hailed her a taxi-cab.
“You’re an angel!” beamed Myra. “And I can’t thank you enough.”
“Well, anytime I can be of use t-to you—— By the way, what are you going to do with all the rings?”
Myra looked laughingly at her hand.
“That’s the question,” she said. “I may send them to Lady Helena Something-or-Other—and—well, I’ve always had a strong penchant for souvenirs. Tell the driver ‘Biltmore,’ Walter.”
— ◆ —
The Smilers.
(The Smart Set, June 1920)
I
We all have that exasperated moment!
There are times when you almost tell the harmless old lady next door what you really think of her face—that it ought to be on a night-nurse in a house for the blind; when you’d like to ask the man you’ve been waiting ten minutes for if he isn’t all overheated from racing the postman down the block; when you nearly say to the waiter that if they deducted a cent from the bill for every degree the soup was below tepid the hotel would owe you half a dollar; when—and this is the infallible earmark of true exasperation—a smile affects you as an oil-baron’s undershirt affects a cow’s husband.
But the moment passes. Scars may remain on your dog or your collar or your telephone receiver, but your soul has slid gently back into its place between the lower edge of your heart and the upper edge of your stomach, and all is at peace.
But the imp who turns on the shower-bath of exasperation apparently made it so hot one time in Sylvester Stockton’s early youth that he never dared dash in and turn it off—in consequence no first old man in an amateur production of a Victorian comedy was ever more pricked and prodded by the daily phenomena of life than was Sylvester at thirty.
Accusing eyes behind spectacles—suggestion of a stiff neck—this will have to do for his description, since he is not the hero of this story. He is the plot. He is the factor that makes it one story instead of three stories. He makes remarks at the beginning and end.
The late afternoon sun was loitering pleasantly along Fifth Avenue when Sylvester, who had just come out of that hideous public library where he had been consulting some ghastly book, told his impossible chauffeur (it is true that I am following his movements through his own spectacles) that he wouldn’t need his stupid, incompetent services any longer. Swinging his