Читать книгу A Husband by Proxy - Jack Steele - Страница 14

Garrison crossed the room with an active stride and closed the door firmly.

Dorothy was pale when he turned. She, too, was standing.

"You can see that I've got to be posted a little," he said quietly.

"To err has not ceased to be human."

"You have made no mistakes," said Dorothy in a voice barely above a whisper. "I didn't expect them. When I found they had come I hardly knew what to do. And when they declared I had no husband I had to request you to come."

"Something of the sort was my conclusion," Garrison told her. "I have blundered along with fact and fiction as best I might, but what am I supposed to have done that excites them both to insult me?"

Dorothy seemed afraid that the very walls might hear and betray her secret.

"Your supposed marriage to me is sufficient," she answered in the lowest of undertones. "You must have guessed that they feel themselves cheated out of this house and other property left in a relative's will."

"Cheated by your marriage?" said Garrison.

She nodded, watching to see if a look of distrust might appear in the gaze he bent upon her.

"I wouldn't dare attempt to inform you properly or adequately to-night, with my uncle in the house," she said. "But please don't believe I've done anything wrong—and don't desert me now."

She had hardly intended to appeal to him so helplessly, but somehow she had been so glad to lean upon his strength, since his meeting with her relatives, that the impulse was not to be resisted. Moreover she felt, in some strange working of the mind, that she had come to know him as well within the past half-hour as she had ever known anyone in all her life. Her trust had gone forth of its own volition, together with her gratitude and admiration, for the way he had taken up her cause.

"I left the matter entirely with you this afternoon," he said. "I only wish to know so much as you yourself deem essential. I feel this man is vindictive, cowardly, and crafty. Are you sure you are safe where he is?"

"Oh, yes, I'm quite safe, even if it is unpleasant," she told him, grateful for his evident concern. "If need be, the caretaker would fight a pack of wolves in my defense."

"This will?" asked Garrison. "When is it going to be settled—when does it come to probate?"

"I don't quite know."

"When is your real husband coming?" he inquired, more for her own protection than his own.

She had not admitted, in the afternoon, that she had a husband. She colored now as she tried to meet his gaze.

"Did I tell you there was such a person?"

"No," said Garrison, "you did not. I thought—— Perhaps that's one of the many things I am not obliged to know."

"Perhaps." She hesitated a moment, adding: "If you'd rather not go on——"

She lowered her eyes. He felt a thrill that he could not analyze, it lay so close to jealousy and hope. And whatever it was, he knew it was out of the bargain, and not in the least his right.

"It wasn't for myself I asked," he hastened to add. "I'll act my part till you dismiss me. I only thought if another man were to come upon the scene——"

The far-off sound of a ringing house-bell came indistinctly to his ears. Dorothy looked up in his face with a startled light in her great brown eyes that awoke a new interest within him.

"The bell," she said. "I heard it! Who could be coming here to-night?"

She slipped to the door, drew it open an inch, and listened there attentively.

Garrison was listening also. The door to the outside steps, in the hall below, was opened, then presently closed with a slam. The caretaker had admitted a caller.

"Good! I'd like to see him!" said the voice of a man. "Upstairs?"

Dorothy turned to Garrison with her face as white as chalk.

"Oh, if you had only gone!" she said.

"What's the trouble?" he asked. "Who's come?"

"Perhaps you can slip in my room!" she whispered. "Please hurry!"

She hastened across the apartment to a door, with Garrison following. The door was locked. She remembered she had locked it herself, from the farther side, since the advent of her uncle in the house.

She turned to lead him round, by the hall. But the door swung open abruptly, and a tall, handsome young man was at the threshold. His hat was on. He was dressed, despite the season, in an overcoat of extraordinary length, buttoned close round his neck. It concealed him from his chin to his heels.

"Why, hello, Dot!" he said familiarly, advancing within the room. "You and your Jerold weren't trying to run away, I hope."

Dorothy struggled against her confusion and alarm.

"Why, no," she faltered. "Cousin Ted, you've never met Mr. Fairfax.

Jerold, this is my cousin, Mr. Theodore Robinson."

"How do you do?" said Garrison, nodding somewhat distantly, since none of the Robinson group had particularly appealed to his tastes.

"How are you?" responded Dorothy's cousin, with no attempt to conceal an unfriendly demeanor. Crossing to Dorothy with deliberate intent to make the most of his relationship, he caught her by the arms.

"How's everything with you, little sweetheart?" he added in his way of easy intimacy. "What's the matter with my customary kiss?"

Dorothy, with every sign of fear or detestation upon her, seemed wholly unable to move. He put his arm roughly about her and kissed her twice.

Garrison, watching with feelings ill suppressed, beheld her shrink from the contact. She appeared to push her cousin off with small effort to disguise her loathing, and fled to Garrison as if certain of protection.

"What are you scared of?" said young Robinson, moving forward to catch her again, and laughing in an irritating way. "You used not to——"

Garrison blocked him promptly, subconsciously wondering where he had heard that laugh before.

"Perhaps that day has passed," he said quietly.

The visitor, still with his hat on, looked Garrison over with anger.

"Jealousy already, hey?" he said. "If you think I'll give up my rights as a cousin you're off, understand?"

Garrison stifled an impulse to slap the fellow's face.

"What are your rights as a cousin, if I may ask?" he said.

"Wait and see," replied Robinson. "Dot was mighty fond of me once—hey, Dot?"

Garrison felt certain of his ground in suppressing the fellow.

"Whatever the situation may have been in the past," he said, "it is very much altered at present."

"Is that so?" demanded Theodore. "Perhaps you'll find the game isn't quite finished yet."

Dorothy, still white and overwrought, attempted to mediate between the two.

"I can't let you men start off like this," she said. "I—I'm fond of you both. I wish you would try to be friendly."

"I'm willing," said her cousin, with a sudden change of front that in no wise deceived Garrison, and he held forth his hand. "Will you shake?"

That Dorothy wished him to greet the fellow civilly, and not incur his ill-feeling. Garrison was sure. He took the proffered hand, as cold as a fish, and dropped it again immediately.

Theodore laughed, and stepped gracefully away, his long coat swinging outward with his motion. Garrison caught a gleam of red, where the coat was parted at the bottom—and he knew where he had heard that laugh before. The man before him was no other than the one he had seen next door, dressed in red fleshings as Satan.