WHAT had happened to Marguerite was this.
She had never been to New York before, although she had traveled with
her father and mother now and then in other directions. She knew
nothing, of course, about the city save what she had gleaned from
occasional references to it in novels. When the porter of the Pullman
asked her before they reached Manhattan Transfer whether she was going
uptown or downtown she looked at him bewildered for an instant. Then
reasoning that an office building would likely be downtown, and she
wanted to be near to the place where she intended going the first thing
in the morning, she answered after that instant's hesitation,—
"Oh, yes, downtown. I'm going downtown."
"Then you get out at Manhattan Transfer, lady," said the porter eyeing
her a bit questioningly, she thought, because she had said downtown at
that time of night.
Manhattan Transfer looked wide and desolate and empty. There were
few passengers so late and there seemed to be no official in charge.
Marguerite stood aimlessly for a few minutes, looking this way and
that, wandering up, and then down, looking off at the dim distance of
stars and weird lights. Was this the great New York about which she had
heard so much?
But at last a train came. A brakeman on the step, swinging a lantern,
and yelling some unintelligible thing condescended to listen to her
plea.
"Where you wantta go, lady? Uptown or downtown?" The same mystical
question, and it must have been all wrong the way she answered it
before.
"Oh, I don't know which," she cried, almost in tears, for she was
suddenly realizing her lonely situation at this late hour. "I want to
go to a good respectable hotel."
"You go uptown lady, then. You get on the next train that comes by,
over that side of the platform; be 'long in five minutes now. Take you
to the Pennsylvania Station, good hotel right across the street. All
Aboard!"
And he swung away, leaving her more desolate than ever, for now the
wind-swept platform was empty of the few travelers who had been waiting
for this train, and Marguerite dared not go in search of any official
who might be inside the shelters lest she miss her train. Thus it was
that she arrived at the great station almost an hour later than the
train by which she should have come. Emerging into the gloom, and
climbing the midnight stairs into the wide upper area, she felt smaller
and more alone even than when she had stood on the high barren sweep of
Manhattan Transfer.
There was noise and light here, a blare of it, and a strange midnight
clatter that frightened her.
If it had not been for a kindly agent of the Traveller's Aid who
happened by just as she emerged from the iron gate, and said, noting
her hesitancy, "Can I help you?" she might have stood there all night
perhaps, afraid to venture into that vast empty floor like a little
vessel setting sail to an unknown port.
But the friendly Traveller's Aid soon had the weary girl safely
established in the great hotel across the way, and possessed of all the
information she needed to get herself to the desired number on Fifth
Avenue in the morning.
Mind and body cannot continue forever in a state of violent emotion
without some rest, and Marguerite, finding herself at last in a quiet
room with a luxurious bed, and nothing she could possibly do until
morning, succumbed to her weariness and fell into a deep sleep.
She intended quite fully to waken about seven o'clock, get herself
in readiness for her errand, and then try to get in touch with Rufus
Keller. She thought she had a pretty good idea where to telegraph him,
and felt that if she did so, it would only be a matter of a few hours
before she had word that he was coming to her at once.
She was not well enough versed in the ways of travelers to leave an
order at the hotel desk to have them call her at seven, and if she had
been, she would have been too confident that it was unnecessary. She
had prided herself for years on her ability to set herself to waken any
time at all, and never fail to waken on the minute. However that was,
it turned out that she slept on straight past seven, past eight, past
nine, past ten, past eleven, and never wakened till quarter to twelve
o'clock, dazed and vague as to where she was or why she was there.
Meantime at ten o'clock Mary Dunlap and Mrs. Sheldon arrived in the
city, and took their way briskly, attended by a porter carrying their
luggage, straight through the tiled tunnel and into the Pennsylvania
Hotel, where they were given a room one floor below where Marguerite
slept her exhausted sleep.
"We had better not wait for anything," said Marguerite's mother
anxiously, giving a push and a pat to the straggling locks about her
temples and walking nervously toward the door.
"My dear, you are going to have a cup of coffee before we stir a step,"
said Mary Dunlap firmly. "I told the boy as we came up in the elevator
to have it sent up at once and it's not going to take three minutes
to drink it. I tell you nothing is doing in New York until ten, and
she can't get away right at once. There is no use running risks. You
are going on your nerve, and that might give out at the wrong time and
spoil everything. There, he is knocking now. Sit down and drink it.
Then we'll call a taxi and be there in no time! It is quite early yet
and I'm positive Mr. Oliver—I mean Keller—never goes down to his office
before half past ten at the earliest."
But Nelson Whitney had not been able to sleep. He had laid himself
properly in bed of course and closed his eyes. He had committed himself
and his wishes and his girl to the care of One who was infinitely
powerful, infinitely able, infinitely willing to bring order out of
confusion, and he was resting on that; but he lay there staring into
the night and facing a thing that might be coming to him on the morrow.
Supposing he should find that Marguerite had already gone to that other
man, and that, unworthy though he believed him to be, she was now
irrevocably committed to him, for better, for worse. Could he give up
his will in the matter, his joy, his very life, and give up his girl to
a sorrow he felt was inevitable if she married Keller?
Whitney did not oversleep. He arose far earlier than he had set himself
to be about. He tried to eat some breakfast, but it was as dust and
ashes in his mouth. He went out to walk, but the exercise was merely
mechanical. He did not see the buildings he passed, nor notice anybody
on the street. He was going over the probable program for the morning,
trying to decide which thing he should do first.
If he went to the train to meet Mrs. Sheldon, he would be late in
getting to Fifth Avenue when Marguerite would be likely to be arriving.
If he went to Fifth Avenue first, he would be too late to meet the
train. He finally decided that it was more important to find Marguerite
than her mother, for the mother would communicate with Mary at home as
soon as she located in a hotel and if he found Marguerite, he could
telephone to Mary and have little trouble in locating Mrs. Sheldon
afterward. Marguerite was of course the first consideration.
He had no trouble in finding the number on the avenue that had been
indicated in Marguerite's note, and was somewhat reassured, but also
not a little troubled to find the name, "R. H. Oliver, Manager," in
gold letters on the rich glass of the heavy mahogany door. Just what
effect would it have upon the girl who had taken this wild midnight
journey to prove there was no such person? He pondered this as he
sought out the janitor and asked a few questions about the usual hour
of opening the offices in that building.
He was still pondering it as he set out to walk a regular beat, up the
avenue, across the street, down the avenue, across and back again,
varying it occasionally by a quick detour into one of the side streets
where he turned about and returned the other way. He did not care to
be noticed, as he kept his anxious vigil. As the minutes passed into
an hour and then dropped into long minutes again, his heart sank with
the fear lest after all somehow he had missed her. Perhaps she had come
down to the office building ahead of him, or perhaps she had looked up
the name in the city directory, discovered that it really was there,
and had changed her course. Why had he not thought of that before? Yet
what else could he have done than he had done? He had no clue but this,
and must follow it to its reasonable end.
There were not many people on that part of the avenue so early, and
he had no difficulty in getting a good look at each one. He felt
reasonably certain that she could not have got by since he had arrived,
so he tramped back and forth like a lion in a cage, not daring to go
beyond the bounds he had set himself lest somehow she escape him. The
thought that was aching into his heart now was what possible connection
could there be between this man Oliver and the fellow Keller whom his
girl had declared her intention of marrying after she had proved that
there was no such person as Oliver?
A dim possibility was stealing through his mental turbulence, but
he rejected such an explanation of the situation, as unworthy of a
decent man to think about another, even about one whom he distrusted.
Yet again and again it recurred. Had someone been trying to make his
little girl see that the man with whom she seemed to be infatuated was
unworthy of her? Had she set out to disprove what they had told her? It
must be something of that sort of course, but what?
By the time that he had tramped nearly two hours away in anxious
watching, he was in a mood to wish he could get his hands on this
Keller man and give him a good thrashing. He felt more and more
confident that he deserved it, even though he might be none of the
unworthy kinds of villain that his imagination had been conjuring.
It was still five minutes to the hour the janitor had mentioned as
opening time for offices when he finally tramped back to the building
and entered the elevator. He had considered staying outside in the
street till he saw Marguerite arrive, but rejected the idea as futile.
She would be very likely to see him if he came too near, and perhaps
evade him, for it was most likely that she wanted none of her friends
with her on this expedition, else she would surely have confided in her
mother.
He had considered also secreting himself somewhere in the hallway, at a
good vantage point to watch for her, if there were such a hiding place,
but rejected that idea also, because if anything was going to happen,
he wanted to be there to see what it was. He felt that it was his right
to understand the case, seeing he was going to try to help Marguerite.
How else could he know whether or not he might be intruding where even
angels should not tread? No, he must be in the office, and well placed
where she would not notice him, or he might never find out whether
he even had a right to try to help her. He must fathom this mystery
himself. It was not anything Marguerite's mother could tell him, else
he felt sure she would have called for him in the middle of the night
even, to accompany her and help her in her trouble. That it was a
terrible trouble to the mother he had no doubt.
He had a bad half minute when several young women came hurriedly into
the hall and rushed for the elevator. Perhaps she was among them, and
this would be by no means the place he had planned to meet Marguerite,
in the elevator!
But the young women were none of them the girl he sought; they were
obviously secretaries hastening to their various jobs, and he drew an
involuntary breath of relief as the elevator shot up to the floor to
which he was going. The young women all got out at different stops by
the way.
He was glad that he was the only one in the elevator when it stopped at
the ninth floor, and he could get off and take his bearings once more
without observation. Then he noticed that the door of R. H. Oliver's
office was standing ajar, and with quickened pulse he hurried down the
hall.